In the 1993 live-action movie adaptation of Hank Ketcham's comic book, Dennis ticks off all the trademark tropes that make Dennis, Dennis. This is the blond-haired, blue-eyed American Dennis I should add, not the more sinister British one. The very same Dennis the Menace who partially inspired Matt Groening's Brat Simpson. So, as I was saying, in the Warner Bros. movie, the essentially good-natured Dennis gets into mischief while trying to earn Brownie points doing the right thing, triggers crazy calamities that land friends, family and neighbours in hospital, induces Mr Wilson to shout his name, elongating the vowels in a lung-bursting manner that would wake the dead, and so on.
What makes Dennis the movie different from all the cartoons and comics is the very welcome presence of Christopher Lloyd who plays a no-good, thieving vagrant who hasn't washed, shaved or brushed his teeth since he was ejected from Borstal (or wherever) for launching fluffy kittens out of a comedy-clown-cannon. I may have dreamt some of this, but you get the gist. Of course, Dennis surreptitiously apprehends the mucky reprobate, delivering him to the police on a plate, thereby reconciling with the community for any adventitious misdemeanours executed.
To coincide with the movie, Ocean Software released a traditional action-platformer in which you star as the eponymous mini-hero with a view to... well, it mirrors the celluloid experience as you'd expect, whilst taking a number of artistic license liberties with the source material. We're required to ramble throughout stages themed around a sewer, the local park, and Mr Wilson's house next-door, each culminating in an end-of-level skirmish with a mega-villain of some sort. To improve our chance of survival, Dennis is equipped with a small selection of weaponry; a peashooter, water pistol and slingshot are at his disposal.
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