By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Steve Carr
Cast: Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Alexa Nisenson, Andrew Daly, Thomas Barbusca, Adam Rally, Retta and Rob Riggle.
Rating: Good.
Director Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care and Paul Blart: Mall Cop) brings the teen comedy “Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” and I was very pleased with the result.
Based on the best selling book by James Patterson and Chris Tebbets, the movie centers in Rafe Khatchadorian (Griffin Gluck) the new kid in school who tries to adapt to the system of the estrict Principal Dwight (Andrew Daly) who constantly reminds all his students specialy Rafe about the code of conduct in school.
In a school meeting in his first day, Rafe draws a sketch of Principal Dwight; eventually he finds out and burns Rafe’s sketch book.
Now Rafe will seek for a payback and his friends will join him to create a plan to attack Principal Dwight and humilliate him in front of the whole school.
One thing that I liked of“Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” was the fact that the movie is done with a lot of heart and the results speaks for itself. Honestly I didn’t had any expectations towards the film and I said to myself this is the typical teen movie about a boy who gets in trouble and has to find a way to get out of it. This wasn’t the case and the movie does pay off.
I saw a lot of influence of in movies like “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” directed by the late John Hughes who in my opinion is one of the greatest comedy directors of all time and it’s kind of a homage towards him. I saw this in the development of characters like Principal Dwight’s who has a lot of resemblance with Principal Rooney from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” portrayed by Jeffrey Jones.
The script written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Kara Holden was written with so much fun and wit that the movie does give a couple of laughs and has good jokes.
The direction of Carr was sharp and precise and other factor that I liked with the movie was the animation secuences that involve Rafe’s imaginary world with his drawings. This is one of the things that are the brand of the movie and the animation secuences work at all levels.
The performance by young Griffin Gluck as Rafe it’s sweet and tender and you identify immediately with his character. The other perfromances that wereboth fun to watch were from Andrew Daly who plays Principal Dwight and Rob Riggle who plays Carl, Rafe’s mom’s boyfriend who is a complete jerk but plays really well and funny.
Overall the movie works and they are details that are cheesy from the film and too predictable but it didn’t bother me.
“Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” is one the big surprises of this year and I give it a huge recommendation and I can guarantee that you will be entertained and specially for those of you who are parents and take your kids to the theater you will enjoy it.