TxMike I had heard about this movie over the years but had never seen it. My interest was piqued by Alisan Porter recently winning a singing competition and she truly is a remarkably good singer. She of course as a youngster played Curly Sue in this movie so I wanted to see her in it, now that I know a bit about her as an adult. I found it streaming on Amazon Prime.As the movie starts we see the pair, a man and a little girl, on a road trip of sorts, hitching rides however they could, until they make their way to Chicago. They have become scam artists, as a way to feed themselves. She is a very smart little girl but without any education, and can't read or write.The man is James Belushi as Bill Dancer and the girl is Alisan Porter as Curly Sue. Working one of their scams, where Bill gets Sue to hit him on the head with a board, then they find an unsuspecting driver in a parking garage, pretend to get hit by the car, in the hopes of getting a meal and maybe a few dollars.The lady they scam is pretty Kelly Lynch as high-powered lawyer, Grey Ellison. They get a meal but no money. But a day later exiting her parking garage she in fact does run over him, the two end up at her place where she takes care of them.The arc of the story is to see if this hard-nosed lawyer can soften up by her association with Curly Sue, and to see if Bill can straighten up and get an honest job.I must say I am pleasantly surprised at what a fine young actress Porter was at that very young age. Not only her delivery of lines convincingly but also her timing and facial expressions are just right. She never seems like she is "acting", she seems to be living the role.SPOILERS: Grey's mean and jealous boyfriend of 4 years phones protective services which results in Bill being locked up and Sue being placed in a foster facility. But Grey pulls strings, gets them released, she ditches the old boyfriend, plans to adopt Sue. Bill was not her father anyway, he started to care for her when a one-night stand went bad, but he also seemed to be headed for Grey's good graces.Did I say how good Alisan Porter is in this role?

Steve Pulaski John Hughes' Curly Sue is the film equivalent to a box of chocolates. When it's given to you it looks beautiful, sweet, harmless, and lovely, but as time goes on, it becomes sticky, disgusting, and before you know it, it's time to throw it away. Curly Sue starts out promising, progresses pretty quickly, but there are instances that are questionable and not very necessary.This went on to be Hughes' final film in the director position. Many opinions have been tossed around why. Some says its failure is the reason why he quit the position, some say he just got tired of working in the film industry, and others say after he got off the train of adolescence, he wanted to do something completely different. Whatever the case may be, I can still say that Curly Sue is not a horrible film, but a film that clearly lacks confidence in its current state. Everything about this spells drama, but it seems during production, Hughes made up his mind that he wanted this to be a comedy too. There's a lot of directionless hitting with cheap, slapstick sound effects that don't fit at all to this movie, and really throw a wrench under the screenplay's tires. There are shots of Jim Belushi being thrown into a bus, people being punched in the face, and so on. It gets to be much and it shows a grand lack of confidence when a drama needs to throw punches.The plot revolves around Bill Dancer (Belushi) and his pint-sized, precocious accomplice Curly Sue (Porter) who go around conning people to give them money so they can pay for their next meal. They are the kind of guys that will run up to the back of your car and fall down to make it look like you hit them, so they can get a little money from you. They manage to trick bitter divorce lawyer Grey Ellison (Lynch) by using the same practice, and kindly takes them into her home despite her husband's better wishes.Alisan Porter is perhaps the cutest thing in the film. Her character is so harmless and cheery that she is effortlessly likable throughout the course of the film. There's one scene where it is clearly nippy outside and she tells Bill "I'm freezing my balls off." Bill replies "you don't have balls to freeze off." She is impossible not to like, and she offers more than her curly hair and cute smile.The film doesn't go anywhere very quickly, and the effect it leaves is moot at best. The characters are cute, the plot is sufficient, but the overwhelming amount of slapstick and the sort of manipulation the film possesses is enough to turn someone off. John Hughes has been called "the philosopher of adolescence" and speaks to a generation who once thought that nobody could define them. He should've reminded himself that sentimental kid comedies were a dime a dozen.Starring: James Belushi, Kelly Lynch, and Alisan Porter. Directed by: John Hughes.

Electrified_Voltage This 1991 release was written, directed, and produced by the late John Hughes, who would continue to write and produce for movies after this, but would never direct again. I knew this was one of his films, which was how I discovered it in the first place, so I decided to watch it, but wasn't expecting it to live up to most of his more popular works from the eighties. "Curly Sue" seems to be pretty obscure compared to many other Hughes films, and I noticed a mediocre rating here, so as much as I've been impressed with most of the other efforts I've seen from the filmmaker, it wouldn't have surprised me if I had found this particular one to be consistently boring throughout. It did look like that for a while, but eventually, that changed a bit.Curly Sue is an orphaned young girl who has been taken care of by a homeless man named Bill Dancer since she was an infant. Together, these two survive by going around and scamming people in order to get food. They scam Grey Ellison, a rich lawyer, by making it look like she has just hit Bill with her car in a parking lot. They get a meal from her, but that wasn't as much as they were expecting. However, very shortly after this scam, Curly Sue and Bill meet Grey again, and this time, she accidentally ends up hitting Bill with her car for real! The lawyer then takes the two of them to her luxurious apartment, thinking they are biologically father and daughter, and they get to stay there for the night, even though her snobbish boyfriend, Walker McCormick, does not approve of this. Curly Sue and Bill find their lives changing as Grey lets them stay in her apartment, but are still headed for some complications.This movie is a dramedy, which means it has both humour and serious moments. For the most part, the humour doesn't work so well. Some parts did amuse me, such as the "she was too pretty" segment, but I usually kept a straight face during the film. Some parts around the beginning may have put a puzzled look on my face, such as the part where Bill gets Curly Sue to bash him over the head and she sends him flying through the air! Pretty much everything near the beginning, whether it was supposed to be funny or serious, failed to impress me. However, I eventually started finding much of "Curly Sue" to be fairly gripping, thanks to the drama in the film, though the humour continues to fail, and there may be some tedious segments, especially the movie theatre one. I did not care for the overacting of John Getz as Walker McCormick, but most of the cast performances are at least reasonable. At first, it looked like I was really going to dislike the Grey Ellison character, played by Kelly Lynch, with the scenes showing her on the job, but I found that this character soon changes.John Hughes certainly could have ended his directing career with a better film than this, but if you ask me, this one isn't as bad as its reputation may suggest. Yes, the humour is usually lacklustre, and the filmmaker was well known for the humour in his movies, plus people have also considered "Curly Sue" to be excessively sentimental and clichéd, and I can understand that, but personally, I still found it heartwarming enough to give it an above average rating. If you watch this result of Hughes' final stint as a director, which came eighteen years before his premature death caused by a heart attack, and expect it to be up there with "The Breakfast Club", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", etc., you could very easily be disappointed. This is a different idea than any of those movies, and wasn't done as well, but while I think it's far from great (unlike some people), I guess it is at least slightly underrated.

zatoichi101 I strongly disagree with "ctomvelu" regarding Jim Belushi's talent. I happen to like Belushi very much. Admittedly, I was skeptical when he first appeared on the scene, because I was such a HUGE fan of his late brother John. But Jim has an on-screen charm that has gotten him very far -- and he has developed it well over the years.Curly Sue is one of his earlier films -- his weight is a giveaway (ain't that true for most of us?) -- and I like the film. Yes, it is touching and heartwarming, so if you're into car chases, explosions and gratuitous sex, then you might want to pass on this one -- it is a warm film of three lost soles who find each other. Don't get me wrong, I am all for the three aforementioned keys to a successful film, but I also like a nice, solid tale like this one.And although Belushi and Kelly Lynch deliver excellent performances, the real star of this film is Alisan Porter -- who is absolutely adorable.I don't know what happened to her career, but whoever is responsible for dropping the ball (agent? parents? herself?) should be shot. You couldn't ask for a more perfect introduction to fame than this film, and yet nothing of note has been heard from her since.Another sad Hollywood story ...