Diary of a Wimpy Kid Review
By David Kempler
Dear Diary, Please Make Them Think I'm Cool
"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is a novel for kids, told with both words and comics mixed together. It is broken into multiple books and is an enormous success for its author, Jeff Kinney. The initial book in the series has been adapted to the screen by Thor Freudenthal and will no doubt make gobs of cash for all concerned.
Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) is set to begin his first day of middle school. His teenaged brother, Rodrick (Devon Bostick) enjoys torturing him and getting him in trouble. Rodrick takes particular pleasure in telling Greg that middle school will eat him up and gives him questionable advice on how to get through his daily activities. It's enough to put Greg on edge, but he has no choice but to go to school anyway.
Greg's best friend before middle school was Rowley (Robert Capron) but Greg is concerned that Rowley's shortcomings in coolness could hold Greg back from the greatness in life that he is no doubt destined to experience. Everything about Rowley embarrasses Greg; Rowley's un-cool bike, complete with girly streamers, his goofy looks, due mostly to his being overweight, his penchant for saying un-cool things like, "Do you want to play later", instead of calling it hanging out, etc. Rowley is a great-natured kid but he may turn out to be a social liability.
Greg goes through the normal situations and problems of all kids his age and Freudenthal does a nice job keeping it moving along briskly. There is the relatively new issue of girls and how they fit into the big picture, bullies, lunchroom seating politics, which clubs to join and all of the other nonsense that is so crucial when you are that age.
One thing I found troubling was that Greg, while not being a bad kid, isn't a particularly nice one either. One situation that is a fairly major plot point shows him to be the type of kid, or adult for that matter, that you really would be better off not knowing. Presumably this should not have bothered me because the situation eventually resolves itself, but it made me wonder whether or not later installments in the series would serve to prove that Greg is sort of a snake. Not having read them, I don't have a clue. Judging by the reactions of the little tykes in attendance at my screening, it wasn't a problem to them, so maybe I've lost touch with my inner child.
The bottom line is that the kids are going to eat this up and it's very tolerable for the parents to watch as well.
