Three stars. Rating: PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang
Films adapted from popular children’s books come in two distinct flavors: those taking place in our real world — or at least a close approximation — and those occupying a warped fantasyland with no semblance of authenticity.
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| Judy (Jordana Beatty, center) and her younger brother, Stink (Parris Mosteller) cautiously dig into a dessert fondue of sliced wieners, fruit syrup and breakfast cereal: merely one of the concoctions prepared by their free-spirited Aunt Opal (Heather Graham). |
Last summer’s Ramona and Beezus was an excellent example of the former: a sweet and respectful handling of Beverly Cleary’s famed characters, with a storyline that dealt with kid-oriented crises such as a parent’s lost income or the death of a family pet. I also have fond memories of 2005’s big-screen rendition of Because of Winn-Dixie
.Director John Schultz’s handling of Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, in great contrast, is aggressively silly from the first frame. This is kid-oriented entertainment aimed solely at moppets who watch Nickelodeon specials in order to see big-name stars slimed with green glop, and who firmly believe — as this script demonstrates, time and again — that most adults are clueless numbskulls.
Thus, as a typical example, we’re treated to a limp-noodle aunt who can’t drive, but nonetheless plops her niece and nephew into the back seat of the family station wagon — without seatbelts, of course — and charges through red lights, creating all sorts of vehicular havoc before crashing into an outdoor display and watching as the elephant head from a giant sign impales the hood with its tusks.
Later, the same aunt utterly trashes the family living room while creating one of her many “artistic masterpieces” ... and nobody seems to care, or even notice.
And so on, in a similar vein.
Not my cup of tea, and much too reminiscent of the ghastly, pratfall-laden, live-action “comedies” that nearly sank the Disney Studios in the late 1960s and ’70s. Those films also involved imbecilic adults and the destruction of considerable personal property, usually while hailing a young protagonist as some sort of misfit hero.
One must assume that novelist Megan McDonald, on whose books this film is based, wanted it this way; she co-wrote this script with Kathy Waugh. Yes, McDonald’s Judy Moody books are more opulently farcical than those from, say, Beverly Cleary; Judy is much more given to hilariously theatrical gestures of defiance, disappointment and disgust. Nothing major ever goes wrong in Judy’s world; her perceived traumas are the stuff of superficial nonsense, such as a growing concern that her hoped-for “perfect summer” may turn out to be dull, dreary and discouraging.
