Ladybugs

Though it’s basically a kids’ movie with a cartoonish structure, it’s laced with lewd innuendo: jokes that suggest teen-age sex, homosexuality and even pedophilia. The core of the humor is raunchy, but the tone is sunny and even-tempered. It even tries to go for a few inspirational moments: feminist statements or sermonettes about overcoming fear and realizing potential. Read full review

And you thought the Mapplethorpe show was shocking....But then incongruity is fundamental to comedy, and at least "Ladybugs" has that, if nothing else, going for it. Read full review

Ladybugs isn't a very good movie; but it's a Rodney Dangerfield movie, and that's not bad. They used to call pictures like this ''star vehicles.'' Here the story, the plot, the other actors and everything else serve as nothing but a bland backdrop for Rodney Dangerfield's humor and appeal. [28 March 1992, p.C3]

Even when the material is feeble, as it is here, Mr. Dangerfield can sometimes be funny, a gravelly-voiced comic confusion of emotional insecurities laced with aggressive tendencies. Read full review

Ladybugs is a clapboard of a movie, but it's a genial, harmless one. The misfit antics of the soccer games are good for a few laughs, although Michael Ritchie's 1976 film The Bad News Bears is far superior in that area of comedy. Regardless, when you find yourself ashamedly laughing at Ladybugs, remember that comedy was never meant to be politically correct. Read full review

The cast of "Ladybugs" is good-natured enough, but Dangerfield is reduced to reading lame one-liners about "drag races" as his future stepson hops in and out of a dress. Brandis is never allowed to have much fun with the complications that result from pretending to be a girl, and his best friend (Vinessa Shaw) barely seems to notice when he reveals that he's been deceiving her. What should have been a wild door-slamming farce never really gets started. already are turning from brown. [28 March 1992, p.C5]

Rodney Dangerfield has always had the potential to be one of the funniest men in American movies, and when filmmakers have taken advantage of that potential, the results have often been hilarious. Unfortunately, LADYBUGS squanders his talents in a cheap and crude comedy. Read full review

A klutzy would-be comedy about a girls' soccer team, Ladybugs is sexist, homophobic and woefully unfunny to boot. Paramount apparently thought it was ordering up another Bad News Bears, but the garish Ladybugs has the look of a third-rate TV movie. Read full review

The movie has a big, warm, fuzzy heart - and not a bellylaugh in sight. [30 March 1992, p.5]