Review by Anne Wollenberg
Stars Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Rachael Harris,
Steve Zahn, Devon Bostick, Chloe Grace Moretz,
Grayson Russell, Laine MacNeil, Alex Ferris
Written by Jackie Filgo, Jeff Filgo, Gabe Sachs & Jeff Judah
Certification UK PG | US PG
Runtime 92 minutes
Directed by Thor Freudenthal
When kids go to school in the movies, it’s almost a social minefield. From Carrie and Karate Kid to Mean Girls, the hell and horror of fitting in, or not, is a theme that crops up again and again. Usually though, the films about popularity, cliques and bullying tend to revolve around teenagers. So you might think that Diary of a Wimpy Kid, where the kid in question is only just starting middle school, has come along to fill something of a gap.
Greg Heffley (Gordon) badly wants to be cool, but his best friend Rowley (Capron) keeps inadvertently helping him to commit social suicide. And so it is that Greg and Rowley find themselves unwelcome at every lunch table in the cafeteria, a sign of social rabies if ever there was one. Greg’s constant, desperate attempts to achieve popularity – signing up for wrestling club, for example – keep backfiring, although you know he can only get so lonely, and so unpopular, before he learns some Valuable Lessons and everything becomes hunky-dory again. What were you expecting him to do – blow up the school, Heathers-style?
So of course there are some fuzzy moral messages in there, plus a vaguely amusing running gag that revolves around a mouldy piece of cheese. But the lame attempts at humour aren’t the real issue. Diary of a Wimpy Kid really falls down because it revolves around a series of boring, predictable stereotypes. Greg expects to be more popular than Rowley because he’s better-looking while Rowley is chubby and over-sensitive. And the dribbling class geek? He’s ginger.
Greg’s take on the traumas of his daily life are evidently supposed to be witty and well-observed, but he’s whiny and egotistical, and it’s hard to feel any real sympathy with his lack of popularity given you’re likely to end up hating him too by about halfway through the film. The only real breath of fresh air comes from Angie (Moretz), who works on the school paper and turns up to coolly mock Greg every now and then, while other attempts to introduce sideplots – such as Greg’s inept dad (Zahn) attempts to stop teenagers from toilet papering the house – fail miserably.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid has its funny moments, but The Wonder Years this ain’t.