Diary of a Wimpy Kid

For those who haven't read the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books, let me tell you, they're really funny. Their target demographic may be a bit younger than I but the jokes all land. Especially when they reference Shel Silverstein.


Currently, there are four DoaWK books with a fifth scheduled to come out this year. But that's not the only 2010 "Wimpy Kid" release. Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights to turn Jeff Kinney's series into a full-length feature film. And that's where my excitement really peaked. Then the trailer came out. And that's when I pretended my excitement didn't actually peak as high as it did.



Live-action: strike one. Casting some random pre-teen with cooler hair than mine to play the three-stranded loser with a hunch: strike two. Hiring four screenwriters to produce a script and thereby replacing Kinney's intelligent humor with the same Kids-Are-Stupid, dumbed down "jokes" that have plagued children's movies like Inspector Gadget and Snow Dogs: a huge strike three. I know this arguement's been completely beaten to death, but whatever happened to movies like The Sandlot? Or The Neverending Story? Who's making live-action films for kids that don't treat their audience like pre-natal tards? I enjoyed Snow Day and even Max Keeble's Big Move when they came out but this one just doesn't do a thing for me. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this.