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- Zigzagged in A Cinderella Story. While the school staff are clearly horrified by the humiliation Sam receives at the pep-rally, none of them punish Shelby or the other students for their bullying. That being said, they're clearly on Sam's side when she hooks up with Austin, who left Shelby.
- In Aliens in the Attic, the aliens' Mind-Control Device is ineffective on kids. Naturally, it's up to the kids to save the day. However, a mind-controlled grandma becomes very useful when the kids steal the controller.
- Bad Moms: Applies to the protagonist Amy's children Jane and Dylan. Amy quits her motherly duties to party and run rampant. She doesn't appear too concerned about her children missing meals or falling behind in school and insults them at every chance she gets whenever they ask her for help. She then snaps right back to her senses when the kids run away to their dad and desert her as payback for her neglectful behavior.
- Battle Royale: Not only does the government allow the capture of entire classrooms of children, but they allow putting them on an island, giving them deadly weapons, and telling them to go kill each other and last one alive wins and is free to go. On top of that, the parents never even try to save their children from being murdered, and instead the entire country (or possibly even the world) allows it to happen, waiting for the competition to end and see the winner. The protagonist, Shuya Nanahara, loses his father who commits suicide by hanging himself with a belt without any concern that Shuya now has to fend for himself, and Mitsuko's mother tried to pimp out Mitsuko when she was only 6 years old to a pedophile for the money.
- Blank Check: The FBI is only useful as The Cavalry, Preston's dad is a Jerkass, the bad guys are a Terrible Trio, the limo driver disappears after Preston lets him go because the money has run dry, and nobody else sees anything weird with a kid walking around with a backpack full of dollar bills that we find out early in the film have a big "FBI" stamped on them with UV ink courtesy of Agent Shaynote
- Played straight when the kids in Bradley's Summer stop a terrorist plot, and then decide to chase the terrorists after they'd become kidnappers, the adults are all like "Good luck!" and do nothing to try to help the kids or let the cops handle it. Subverted later on however, when one of the adults actually does do something useful: knock out one of the terrorists while he's holding a gun to the kids.
- Subverted in the Bring It On film series. Most of the featured cheerleading squads are depicted as being autonomous, but they're also comprised of high schoolers who are either nearly or legally adults by the time everything is said and done.
- In The Candy Snatchers, every adult who isn't evil is this. Sean's parents unknowingly foil all his efforts to rescue Candy, while Candy's mother is a drunk who never questions why she hasn't seen her daughter in days.
- Most of the adults in A Christmas Star either ignore Noelle's warnings about the Corrupt Corporate Executive trying to destroy their village or angrily rebuke her for trying to stop their town's main form of income being closed down or everyone in the village being made homeless! Although when the villain's boss finds out what his employee has been doing (mainly, trying to demolish the village to create an amusement park instead of developing in the local area) he fires the man instantly.
- Cuties:
- None of the parents of the girls in the film play a significant role. Amy's mother is the one who appears for the longest time.
- The staff at their school are mostly ignorant if not outright passive with what the girls do, and they only ever intervene if a full-on fight breaks out.
- A common trope of many Gamera films from the 60s and 70s. Director Noriaki Yuasa was infamously obsessed with placing children on a pedestal because of his personal misgivings about Japan's participation and eventual loss in World War II, which he had witnessed as a child. He claimed this made him lose his faith in the world of adults. His films often had children as protagonists bonding with the giant monster Gamera (who thus earned the nickname "Friend of all Children") and figuring out how to beat the villains, while most adults range from comical nuisances and incompetent dullards to outright evildoers. The plots purposely played out like kids' fantasies, following an often nonsensical childlike "cartoon logic". Apart from their general cheapness, it is mainly because of this extremely child-centric nature that the Gamera franchise is still compared unfavorably to other giant monster series like Godzilla.
- The Good Son has Elijah Wood's character trying to tell the adults what a monster his cousin is, but nobody believes him.
- The Fratellis in The Goonies suffer this from time to time in their confrontations with the Goonies. They seem to be able to handle the cops (and Feds) just fine, but they can't quite handle a bunch of teenagers.
- The three children in Hocus Pocus try to inform adults and enlist their help against the witches. It always fails. It doesn't help that the witches turn around Max's attempted warnings to their advantage (they pretend that he's giving them an introduction and give a musical act note ) or the fact that they enchant a large number of adults to "dance until [they] die". Then there's the fact that the witches have come back from the grave prank has probably been played a million times in that town given the local notoriety of the events surrounding said witches.
- Home Alone: Not only was Kevin's family careless enough to abandon him twice when they go on Christmas vacation, but not a single adult or authority figure notices anything suspicious about a child shopping or regularly going out by himself. Heck, Kevin even manages to check into the Plaza Hotel alone in the sequel by fooling the hotel staff with his Blatant Lies, which Kevin's mother even calls them out on. Even the police are like children since they are never able to catch Harry and Marv, and when Kevin's mother sent an officer to check on her son, he just knocked on the door for a while and then decided that there's nobody home. The only competent adults are Old Man Marley and the pigeon lady whom Kevin befriended and Mr. Duncan, who even donates the money from his toy store to save the ill children in the hospital on Christmas.
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas!:
- For most of the film, the smartest characters are an eight-year-old girl and a 53+ year old Grinch.
- In the Grinch's flashback, not only does the teacher do nothing to stop the kids from mocking the Grinch for his facial cuts, but she's actually shown laughing alongside them.
- Every single John Hughes film. The adults are either oblivious (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), stupid (Sixteen Candles), or causing all the problems (The Breakfast Club).
- Joshua's only use for adults is to be pawns in his plan.
- This was subverted in The Karate Kid (2010). Mr Han trained Dre for the tournament. Dre's mother supported him and would have beat the snot out of the kids who messed with her son, if she knew who they were. And the school principal sent both Dre and Cheng out after Cheng purposely tripped Dre, not favoring one side over the other. And she kept an eye out for Dre on the school trip, indirectly preventing Cheng from bullying him.
- Jurassic Park III: Eric is stranded alone for eight weeks on an island said to be the single most dangerous place on Earth, and not only manages to not get eaten by a dinosaur, but manages to eek out a decent existence; he has a secure shelter inside an overturned water truck, and fends off the dinosaurs with only a cache of gas grenades, a homemade ghillie suit and the dino knowledge only a twelve year old could possess. By contrast the adults of the film, especially Eric's parents, have a vice grip on the Idiot Ball and have (near-)fatal run-ins with a Spinosaurus, a Rex and a pack of raptors all in the space of a single afternoon.
- Just One of the Guys, being a teen comedy, plays this straight. The main characters' parents leave town for two weeks and two high schools are depicted as essentially devoid of responsible adult figures.
- The Karate Kid (1984) plays it straight and subverts it. On one hand, Mr. Miyagi is there to stop the fighting between Daniel and Johnny. On the other hand, the kids' parents do nothing at all to prevent the fights. Daniel's mom provides moral support for her son but doesn't do much. Ali's parents shrug off the fighting like it is nothing. Johnny's parents don't even appear in the film.
- Kick-Ass:
- Dave alias Kick-Ass is a 17-year-old boy, and as a superhero far from being Badass Normal. He is known to have fought against three gangsters to protect an innocent. But later the mafioso of New York believes that he is the one who kills his subordinates and hurts his "company". Still, neither the people who work for him, nor the New York police, who are partially corrupt, can track him.
- Red-Mist, another teenager who is a supervillain, can find Kick-Ass, however, within a day and lure him into the trap because he is a superhero. A simple teenager had more success than mafia and police together.
- The film also features Hit-Girl, who is an effective, badass Action Girl.
- It is inverted by the superhero Big-Daddy, who is by far the strongest fighter in the movie. But even though he is one of the few, competent adults, he is far from being morally pure. At best, he is an anti-hero.
- Part of the charm of The Little Rascals film series was that the kids would regularly (and unintentionally) teach the adults a lesson.
- Let Me In one of the main themes of the film is how none of the adults in Owens life protected or helped him in anyway. Despite the fact he was deeply lonely, and openly being tortured by bullies and coming back to his apartment with bloody cuts. It's even reflected in the cinematography of the film where the director chose to never show his parents on screen, his mother's face obscured throughout the entire film and only his father's voice making an appearance.
- The Lost Boys has a group of 12-year-old vampire hunters attempting (and at one point succeeding) to kill the group of teenage vampires. In fact, all the main characters are younger than 20 with the adults being unaware until the big reveal at the end where one character displays, he knew what was going on all along. Even then, he doesn't know everything that was going on, although he immediately knows that his house has just been destroyed in a vampire attack. That his daughter was dating a master vampire appears to have been completely unknown to him.
M-Z
- M3GAN:
- Gemma. For most of the movie, she isn't very involved with being a parent to Cady, is slow to realize there's trouble and comes close to losing her life and Cady's.
- Brandon's mother doesn't seem to realize (or is in denial) that her son is displaying troubling behavior and doesn't call him out when he uses bad language in front of her and Gemma. He's also a few years older than the group of children Cady is which she justifies as "a growth spurt" when Gemma questions his age.
- In Massacre at Central High, no adults even appear until the final scene. David won't tell anyone about the extreme bullying at Central High because "tattling's not in my nature," while Mark knows David is a Serial Killer but doesn't tell anyone out of personal loyalty. Gets to ridiculous extremes after three kids are killed by explosions on campus on the same day, and there's no investigation at all.
- Matilda is full of this. Not a single student at Crunchem Hall manages to convince their parents that Ms. Trunchbull is abusive towards everyone. This is explained in the books, that the Trunchbull uses such extreme punishments that no parent would possibly believe them. It's also mentioned that Trunchbull treats the parents the same way she treats the kids.
- Monster: Mugino and Hoshikawa are kids who are in trouble. Mugino's mother goes to school and complains to teachers about her son being abused. Teachers won't talk to her; they are only interested in the school's reputation. Most won't even try to find out what happens with the kids.
- Moxie: Principal Shelly fails to address bullying in her school, refusing to acknowledge the issue. She asks Lucy not to use terms like "harassment" or "bully" and shoos her away when she shows her social media list. She blames Lucy and Keira's supporters for not doing their job properly after Mitchell's fake victim speech on air.
- Mikey: The only characters that seem to display any common sense about Mikey's behavior are his teacher and Jessie.
- Minutemen:
- One of the reasons Virgil comes up with the idea of helping the other kids like them at the school is because the faculty there doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. At one point, they find Vice Principal Tolkan in front of a vending machine that Chester is currently stuck inside and doesn't seem to bother doing anything about it on account of not being able to "change the way high school works”.
- Similarly, instead of helping a bare-naked Chester gets his clothes back from bullies, Tolkan tells him straight to his face that helping him would mean that he’d be "breaking the food chain".
- Mystery Team. The main characters insist that they're more suited to solve the case than the police.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street Has this as Central Theme:
- The first A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Nancy's mother helped start the whole thing, her father doesn't do anything, and the rest of the police only hinder her or ignore her frantic cries for help.
- The sequels more or less follow suit, but there's a bizarre subversion in Freddy vs. Jason. It turns out that the more people are aware and afraid of Freddy (these two usually go hand by hand) the more powerful he becomes. Hence when the adults really got down to it, they effectively eliminated the threat by erasing all written notions of Freddy, banning his name or any details from mentioning, and forcibly institutionalizing and submitting those kids who still remembered about him to a dream-depriving drug treatment. He did eventually find a loophole but still they did their best.
- The Night of the Hunter: Rachel Cooper, the foster mother who takes in the Harper children, is the only adult in the film who is immune to Harry Powell's charms. Uncle Birdie does put in an effort, but after he discovers the mother's body he apparently doesn't report it because as the town eccentric/drunk he fears people will blame him.
- This is justified in Nobody Knows. The adults can't help because they don't know the situation and the kids don't tell them either. Not helping is that Keiko (the kids' mom) rented the apartment without telling the landlord about her two youngest kids, so telling the landlord could get them evicted.
- Remember Me: The teachers at Caroline's school. The girl was attacked at a birthday party, which they don't punish the bullies for, because it didn't happen on school property. Then the next time Caroline is at school, one of the bullies has no problem taunting her in front of the whole class and the teacher does nothing.
- In the Hallmark Channel made-for-TV movie The Santa Incident, Santa has to rely on the help of a couple of kids. Most of the other adults are Homeland Security goons who mistake him for a terrorist.
- SHAZAM! (2019): None of the staff stop the Breyer Brothers' bullying, nor do they even punish them — beating a kid with a crutch should've got them expelled, let alone hitting him hard enough with their truck to leave a scratch on the paint, right in front of the school in front of dozens of witnesses.
- Sky High has the Commander and Jetstream as the only competent heroes shown in work, but they are taken down in seconds by the villain in the finale. Principal Powers appears to be competent, but she is only seen putting students in detention. Anything worthwhile is done by adolescents. Even the villains are all young. Sort of. (Except Stitches, but he's basically controlled by Royal Pain anyway.)
- The Social Network: Granted, the main characters aren't small children, but all the adults they go to for help simply blow them off — Prince Albert, the lawyers (one can almost forgive Mark for his Jerkass behaviors towards them), and, most of all, the Harvard president Larry Summers
- Superbad: A good majority of the adults are either unhinged, ignorant, or outright indifferent. Special mention goes to the convenience store clerk, who doesn't even bother to search for evidence of Fogell's true identity and allows him to purchase alcohol without question.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day: John Connor's foster parents Todd and Janelle are very neglectful of him, which angrily coerces John to spend his whole-time outside home. Later on, T-1000 mimicking Janelle on the phone calling John "honey" and offering him beef stew for dinner makes John point out Janelle would never do something like that.
- This was probably the single worst thing about the 2004 Thunderbirds movie, which shoved most of International Rescue out of the way to leave the plot to the Kid-Appeal Character Alan Tracy, Brains' son, and Tin Tin (all of whom are pre-teens). Yeeah.
- The main character in The Tin Drum realizes this and refuses to age past 3 years old. This means that he eventually becomes a chronological adult but remains a Spoiled Brat of a child.
- In the first Transformers movie, much of the first tier of authority that Sam Witwicky encounters regarding the title being is best summed up by his disbelieving question of a police officer, "Are you on drugs?!" This only applies to the civilian adults. Those involved in the military usually perform rather well considering the circumstances, even if it's not always the best actions to take.
- Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story: Most adults, from Alex's parents to the police, turn a blind eye when Alex, a teenage lesbian, tries to escape from the Simms and their brutal conversion therapy camp. They all know what the Simms do and how they're doing it; they simply don't care, agree with this or can't be bothered.
- In WarGames, two teenagers are the only people who seem to be willing and able to avert nuclear holocaust, while parents, four-star generals and nuclear scientists act befuddled or indifferent.
- In The Way, Way Back, lonely teenager Duncan is ignored by his mother, Pam, who seems only concerned about pleasing Trent, her overbearing boyfriend. Pam doesn't notice Trent saying horrible things to her son until the end of the movie. Trent, Pam and their neighbor also smoke pot and ignore their teens when they get stoned. Averted with Owen, the water park employee who notices Duncan is unhappy and lonely and becomes a friend to him.
- In What We Did on Our Holiday the children end up honouring their granddad's wishes and giving him a Viking funeral after he dies on the beach because the adults are too busy getting ready for a party and arguing for them to be able to tell them what has happened.
- Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz practically controls half the county even forcing Aunt Em and Uncle Henry to surrender Toto, though Em (who despises her) does tell her off. In the Land of Oz Dorothy looks to many adult figures to solve her problems such as Glinda and the wizard, but the wizard is powerless. However, Dorothy discovers the power to return home was inside of her and didn't need help from either Glinda or the wizard.
