“It’s not a diary, it’s a film!” Really?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Thor Freudenthal

A kid’s film about a young, skinny, shy boy who moves into the next year of High School where it’s more important and has a higher social status and whom must overcome his over-confidence in becoming a popular guy to learn the lesson that close friends and family are more important. Heard of this before? Pretty much every children/teenager’s film for the last 30 years, but changed to suit the environment it’s released. That means a newer soundtrack, new cultural references, new human traits that have become unpopular in the younger audience such as braces or a certain colour of hair, and of course, because of the location of the plot, in an American High School, have certain occurrences that happen only in those schools. It’s a textbook coming of age story we’ve all seen before and unluckily it doesn’t break the mould, but only adds to the stock pile. And what’s even more discouraging is that the film is based from a well-liked book which includes cartoon’s that are very funny. These cartoons are used in the film, but not in the right way. From the adaptation of the book, the film stars Zachary Gordon and Robert Capron as the main two leads, Greg and Rowley, two best friends who embark on the journey to become popular. Throw in random cameos from Steve Zahn and Chloe Moretz, yes the girl from Kick-Ass, who as you can tell, feels strangely out of place in the film.

So the plot as mentioned before is Greg and Rowley, two young boys who join the higher rank of Middle School and so begin their journey into becoming popular through a series of hi-jinks like joining the wrestling team or joining the glee club. All of which ends in total humiliation for Greg but strange success for Rowley. Soon Rowley begins to become more popular than Greg and a huge falling out occurs. You probably know the ending where they join together to be best friends to defeat the common enemy. And it does happen. It’s a shame the film isn’t that funny, and only a couple of moments did i smile. It really is shocking that they can produce a teenage film where the market has grown and expanded since the 80’s where films like this were made. It just shows that some film production companies are still living in the past.

A massively poor attempt at a kid’s film that comes off lacking any structure or humour and the acting is wooden and sometimes annoying.

3/10

Simon Childs