Starring: Jason Drucker, Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Charlie Wright
Directed By: David Bowers
Plot: The Wimpy Kid franchise undergoes a massive recasting and sends the family on a road trip. Hilarity ensues.
What Works: I think I chuckled once.
What Doesn’t Work: Never before has “I can’t wait to see where we go next summer!” felt more like a terrorist threat than it does at the end of this film. Please God. No. I don’t know what satanic demon sent this film to theatres, but this never should have gone there. It’s a straight-to-video knock off. They replaced the original cast with worse actors. The first Wimpy Kid movie is actually a decent film. The sequels were meh. But this is utter and complete garbage. The cast is terrible and they have zero chemistry. Tom Everett Scott sleepwalks through the movie, and Alicia Silverstone is obnoxious. What happened to your careers? You’re in a movie where the main running gag is a diaper joke. There are SO MANY bodily fluid jokes in this film. Like, an uncomfortable amount. It’s almost like the screenwriter has a fetish for scat play or something. I’m not kidding. Greg (Drucker) finds a diaper in a ball pit and becomes known as Diaper Boy, a viral meme. This is referenced constantly, and even someone dresses up as him at a con. People ask to take pictures with him. Another character finds a diaper in a dumpster, and mimics the same moment. That same character also poops, loudly, on a toilet. Rodrick (Wright) vomits on said character. Greg has to pee into two bottles in the car. The whole family is pooped on by birds. A pig poops in the car. The toddler even makes an “I pooped” joke at the end of the film. This films is relentless with its poop jokes. The kid who plays Rodrick is one of the worst actors to come along in years. I hope he never acts again. There are moments where his dialog seems like it had to be redone in post. There’s literally nothing I can say about this film that’s good. For there to be adults in this, they make awful decisions after awful decisions. None of the characters are likeable. There’s this really weird sequence that’s shot to mirror the Psycho shower sequence, because the target audience will clearly catch that reference? Was that for the adults in the theatre? I promise you, by that point, they were either asleep or dead. I can usually sit through shit like this and find it somewhat enjoyable, but I hated every single minute of this film. There were times I considered shutting the DVD off, but somehow I just kept going. I made it to the end, and then this fucker Greg threatens me with another summer road trip. No, Greg. You’re done. Go away. I feel confident, at least, in saying that should there be another Wimpy Kid movie, it will not be going to theatres. It will be straight-to-DVD where it belongs. Shockingly, this was directed by the same guy who directed the 2nd and 3rd movies in the series, which are not great films, but still better than this. Here, he lost the soul of the original three films, and what made those films work… at least a little bit.
Final Word: In case you didn’t see this coming, this film is utter trash. If you have kids, and you think ‘this might be a good film for them’, remember… this film is LOADED with poop jokes. Just tons of peeing, and pooping, and vomiting. Then ask yourself, is that the kind of film I want my kid seeing? Aren’t there better films out there? Definitely. Almost literally anything else would be better for your kids. No one should watch this.
Final Grade: F
(My first F of 2017).
