Goddammit, Julius. This isn’t cinema. This isn’t art. This is a movie.

At some point, we have to acknowledge that Dennis Dugan knows how to make films for his audience. We may not agree with the films. We may not even like the films. We may think that the films convey an abhorrent message of normalizing offensive behavior that may be considered sexist, ageist, racist, and any other type of -ist that exists. Sure, Dennis Dugan has nominated for Razzie’s Worst Director for five separate films, winning in 2012 for both Jack and Jill and Just Go With It. But, good god, he has been directing movies and television for 27 years, and his movies have made a crapton of money. As the saying goes, “That which is popular cannot be ignored forever.”

Problem Child is Dennis Dugan’s first film, released in 1990 – incidentally, this is the same year that Adam Sandler was first hired by Saturday Night Live – and it set up the Dennis Dugan formula: spoiled dude does a bunch of bratty things, a bunch of celebrities have stellar cameos, and everybody learns a lesson. Junior is a white immature brat who is hated by almost everybody. Then, he sets up pranks to exact vengeance in a mean-spirited but hilarious way. Eventually, everybody learns their lesson. But, this wasn’t the original idea.

According to lore, this film was pitched by the writing duo of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing team behind Ed Wood, Big Eyes, and American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson. Inspired by a story about parents that sued an adoption agency after the agency had given them a child who had been returned multiple times for behavioral problems, Alexander and Karaszewski had imagined Problem Child as an adult dark comedy satirizing the “bratty child teaches adults about life” formula that it would finally embody. Studio execs got wind of the movie, and turned it into the final product we have here today. Apparently, Scott Alexander wept at seeing how much of a mess it ended up being.

Here’s the thing: Problem Child is a loud, manic, obnoxious, mean-spirited one-joke movie, but Dennis Dugan knows how to direct a set piece. Junior, as a character, is a duality. He’s set up as both a brat to the core, and an outcast who might be justified in his actions. The first scene is him being dumped off by his mother in a bassinet, and then peeing on the unsuspecting person who picks him up. This joke is repeated over and over and over again: somebody is mean to Junior, so he quadruples down in return. Somebody steps on his toys, he bulldozes their mobile home. A girl excludes him from the party because he was adopted, so he sets up a series of pranks to ruin the party for everybody. Problem Child is 81 minutes of this joke being varied upon until he teaches his adoptive father, Ben, that he shouldn’t be such a passive pushover, and that Junior isn’t such a bad kid after all. Of course, this is after they send Flo, Ben’s wife, off on a manure truck in a suitcase.

While all of the jokes are the same result, Dugan directs them with a zip that fills each set piece with a mania that sets this movie’s tone for children even as people are puking on each other or Junior is stealing money from his adoptive grandfather. Without this manic energy, the sequel, which pits an older Junior against a girl problem child, falls apart like the one-note movie it is. Excepting his Marx Brothers-inspired follow-up Brain Donors, Dugan would repeat this manic outcast troublemaker formula in a variety of situations, mostly starring Adam Sandler (thanks A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 4000), to varying results.

Problem Child is available on HBO GO, and airs at 8:25pm on HBO Family.