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Watching the commercials for this movie, I was fairly convinced that I was going to loathe it. For one thing, it was one of those "loosely based on the novel" movies, which usually means that the book author saw the script, hated it, and refused to be associated with the film. Worse, the trailer showed only the most mundane slapstick imaginable (ex: kid gets squirted in the face with a garden hose...and falls over). So when my little brother got it into his mind that this was the "must see" film of the season (of course, he thought the same thing about "Cars", "Over the Hedge", "The Ant Bully", "Monster House", etc, etc), I was admittedly less than thrilled.
But once at the theater, the film won me over for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the writers capture 'kid dialogue' better than just about any other children's film I've ever seen. A prime example of this comes directly after the boys' principal accidentally eats a worm stuck in an egg omelet. The boys do a lame, over-exaggerated impression of the principal lecturing them, which makes it realistic since all little kids think (mistakenly) that they do great mocking expressions of their adult tormentors. Then one of the boys asks, "Why did he say, 'alley oop'?" Another boy responds, "Maybe he's crazy!" and the entire group laughs uproariously. Not an overly witty rejoinder, but exactly the kind of thing a young kid would come up with on the spot and exactly the type of remark other kids his age would find hilarious. As if to confirm it, my kid brother laughed right on cue when they were spoken on-screen; I could practically hear his voice spouting the same exact lines if he was placed in a similar situation.
Another reason the movie works is that the writers manage to work in issues like bullying, sibling relationships, the new kid in school, and peer pressure/conformity without making any of them seem as though they were subplots for some after school special. For example, the bully (Joe) isn't stereotypical; he's definitely bad but not pure evil, and just enough of his home-life is revealed that the audience feels sympathy for him and understands his bullying origins. There's also no "cue the dramatic music" moment where Billy ('Worm Boy') realizes what a complete tool he's being to his younger brother Woody, and yet, by the end of the movie, some type of minor transformation has been made. There's some realism here in the way the characters resolve situations and in the way they relate to each other, and very little of it comes across as corny.
The only drawback to the movie comes in the form of an absolutely laughable dance scene that even the creators of the infamous McDonald's dance party in "Mac and Me" would scoff at. Why oh why was it put into the movie?? Did Austin Rogers (Adam) pull a Macaulay Culkin and refuse to take the role unless he was given a vehicle to showcase his oh so impressive dancing skills? The entire sequence definitely did not need to be there and had slightly less comedic value than any given show on "The History Channel".
Overall, though, this movie was excellent, and the length (about an hour and twenty minutes) was just about perfect. One of the best, most realistic live action kid films you'll ever see if you're ever around children or just remember what being a kid was actually like.


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