Sunday, October 24, 2010

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I watched the Diary of a wimpy kid movie this weekend.  I have read a couple of the books and they are pretty funny.  The series as well as the movie are based on the trials of middle school and the main character’s struggles with popularity.  The books are amazingly funny.  The movie doesn’t really live up to the books.

The problem with the movie is that everyone in the book is a caricature of an archetype.  For a book with illustrations, that is no problem at all.  But for a live action movie, you have to turn the caricatures into real people.  This isn’t something that child actors can do and I am not sure that they were even asked to try and be more of what they were supposed to be.  The bratty girl is the only one that came close and that is because being bratty is easy. 

The books just don’t work on the big screen.  They were perfect in book form.  That is how the story was meant to be told.  It is episodic and fragmented and that just doesn’t make for a great movie. 

Hit girl was in it and that was distracting. 

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2 comments:

SQT said...

My kids liked this movie I lot. (I still haven't seen it). The books are also a big hit. The next one comes in early November and my daughter has been anticipating it for months.

Budd said...

I think my daughter has put it on reserve at the library already. She also does this with the warriors books.