Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul Review

PG:  Some Rude Humor 

Twentieth Century Fox, Color Force, TSG Entertainment

1 Hr and 31 Minutes

Cast: Jason Drucker, Owen Asztalos, Charlie Wright, Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott 

REVIEW: Recently I put up a Rendy Revisit of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series which was a film franchise that played a huge part of a childhood for I saw every single one of them in a theater. Now 5 years after the last cast, its time for a reboot. Literally, the time gap is as long as Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman rebooting to Andrew Garfield Andrew Garfield. I mean if Spiderman can get a reboot, why can't Greg Heffley? I have to be unbiased with this film since a lot of things about it changed from its cast to its Peanuts type score suite that opens the film changed. That score is sort of iconic to me!  BUT I WILL BE UNBIASED!

A Heffley family road trip to attend Meemaw's 90th birthday party goes hilariously off course thanks to Greg's newest scheme to get to a video gaming convention. This family cross-country adventure turns into an experience the Heffleys will never forget.

THE GOOD: One of my biggest issues with the earlier Wimpy Kid movies was that Greg was a total asshole.The first thing I noticed about the movie that I thoroughly liked about it is that GREG IS NOT AN ASSHOLE! He’s barely even selfish and proves to be actually likable. There’s a nice & sweet childlike innocence to him and with that, you relate to the issues he goes through as being a kid. In this movie, Greg is the one you thoroughly really root for. He’s not the one who really gets into trouble for its actually the trouble that seems to find him. Because of this, Jason Drucker is immediately likable portraying Greg Heffley. Zachary Gordon’s performance did carry the movie, but the way he was written made his Greg thoroughly unlikable. You like Drucker in this because his Greg is a likable character. There are several moments when really humiliating things happen to Greg and you can only go, “Man you didn't have to do him like that.” He encounters bigger assholes than him that get him into crazy shenanigans.  

The only person besides Drucker that makes this work is Alicia Silverstone as Susan Heffley. Her performance carries the entire movie along with Drucker. Though you don’t get to like Susan because she’s selfishly overbearing, Silverstone does a great job timing her emotions. She knows when to be comedic and knows when to be dramatic. Her performance is close to Rachel Harris’ but the range Silverstone shows makes her excel above and beyond the rest of the cast. The worst thing about her though is that Silverstone has her naturally blonde hair on since everyone knows that Susan has always been drawn with black hair. 

The movie has some genuinely funny scenes. There a nice little sequence where the entire family conspires against Rodrick in a game called "I confess" where they get him to admit to all the bad things he’s done and deny. A lot of the elements of the movie is faithful to its source material. Every moment in the film is taken out of the book and it's amazing how much material is able to get adapted into something that is feature length. 

THE BAD: So you know that #notmyrodrick thing? Well……they’re right. Somehow Rodrick turned from a comedic asshole to a full on retard. Charlie Wright does try his best to portray Rodrick, but he’s never fully able to fill in the shoes Devon Bostick left off. Bostick was Rodrick because of his performance and the material that was given to him.

This also goes for Tom Everett Scott who never comes close to Steve Zahn’s Frank Heffley. I’m sorry, but the reason I’m attached to Steve Zahn as Frank Heffley more was because of his charisma and his zany performance that thoroughly kept you entertained especially with the second and third film. Tom Everett Scott, on the other hand, does not have that comedic chops that Zahn because he does not have a comedic background. Steve Zahn is a comedic actor who knew what this character was because he was no different to the characters he played in the past. Scott on the other hand never had a transition to comedy because nearly everything he’s was in the past was a drama. The entire time, he just looks awkward and out of place.

But it's great that you fixed your lead character, but did you maintain your comedy from the other movies? No? DAMN IT! Though Greg is a likable character, the movie also ultimately loses its comedic value. The first three movies never relied on poop or pee jokes. It did aim for gross-out humor involving boogers but barely revolving around bodily functions. From watching all three movies, only the first one had a huge pee joke that was honestly laugh-out-loud funny. This movie relies on that bodily function humor WAY TOO DAMN MUCH! They’re not funny, they’re not clever.

The worst form of humor that this movie has to offer are parody scenes. With the Wimpy Kid trilogy, not once did the humor have to rely on scene recreations from other movies. All of those movies had enough material to stand on its own. Though the movie had a Family Guy cutaway style, it never sunk so low to recreate a scene from a movie. With this, you don’t have one but two scene recreations. 

The first one is a little homage to Saving Private Ryan which comes out of nowhere but is funny in concept. It's not funny when it visually played out. It doesn’t work especially for a family film. Seriously, no kid will get a Saving Private Ryan joke and parents would just be confused onto why its even in there. After watching something like Sausage Party which was an R-rated comedy paying homage to an R-rated war film doing their own clever Saving Private Ryan beach scene sequence it fits. Besides after seeing the way Sausage Party do their own version of that movie, you can’t really step it up from there. 

The second homage is just lazy to an extent that you can see it coming from a mile away. The second tribute the movie does is the shower scene from Psycho.  It's not clever, it's not funny, and it's not surprising. That scene just happens five minutes after the Saving Private Ryan sequence and you just groan after that.

This leads me to admit that throughout this 91-minute movie, I did not get one single laugh. I wanted to laugh throughout the movie but I couldn’t. It's a shame because this from David Bowers who is the same director of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules and Dog Days which were the better two films in the franchise. The film is even written by Bowers and series creator Jeff Kinney. I don’t know how the writing manages to be so poor especially when this is from the most authentic people who made this series what it was. You have the guy who directed the majority of the series’ movies and the guy who wrote this entire phenomenon with his two hands. You know how J.K Rowling did the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and did a great job stretching her own material which was something so thin and turned it something inventive and fun? Well, Jeff Kinney stretched his own material which was something so thin to something even thinner. The movie isn’t all that funny, the characters are really one note, and most of all it has a rather slow pace. It never is an entertaining movie for its just dull and it's just there.

You can just show your kids any of the three movies that are currently playing on rotation on either Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network (seriously, those movies play on all three networks) and they’ll have more enjoyment at home then sitting in a theater.

Now, as I calmly did my judgment for this movie, now seems like an appropriate time to get mad. 

FUCK YOU 20TH CENTURY FOX! I see what you’re doing and I’m surprised you’re allowed to get away with it. I know studios release movies week after week, but I’m baffled that you have balls to release two movies out of your studio in one weekend. You got Alien Covenant for the adults and the nerds and you have Wimpy Kid for the kids and the families? I know you’re just doing your business, but get the fuck out of here man. You’re a real total asshole for this little business stunt you pulled. You couldn’t release this shit in April when it had no competition whatsoever, so you decide to release it now? You’re lucky your Boss Baby has been in the top 5 box office numbers for weeks because no other family friendly films were out to defeat it. NOT EVEN THE GODDAMN SMURFS COULD BEAT IT! You could’ve just let this franchise die as it should’ve in 2012. If you had such a hard on making a Wimpy Kid movie, you would’ve let this go straight to DVD. There’s no theatrical quality in this. There's nothing to recommend here.

LAST STATEMENT: Sparse from any authentic laughs from its new and underdeveloped cast, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is a long heartbreak for fans of the series and a long haul to sit through for moviegoers everywhere.

Rating: 1.5/5 | 36%

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