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Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movie Review

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a 2021 animated family comedy film directed by Swinton Scott. It is a rather pedestrian Disney+ flick that is enjoyable, but forgettable.

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“Hey, Greg. After school, you wanna come over and play?“

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Greg Heffley dreams of becoming famous while surviving middle school with his best friend, Rowley. This is my first time seeing any content from this particular franchise based on the famous children’s book series. This is the first solely animated adaptation and I actually really liked its visual style.

It is reminiscent to ‘Peanuts’ in the simplistic character designs and the character is basically pretty much an angular version of Charlie Brown. I did like that simplistic and cartoony charm to the movie and I wish other aspects were as good as the animation and the voice acting, which was surprisingly competent as all sounded like real children, which is important for a story like this.

The main issue here is its structure. This franchise should clearly be directed toward the television series treatment and surely the movie treatment robbed it of its momentum. The episodic structure rendered this movie disparate, repetitive and rather underdeveloped in themes and characterization.

Greg and Rowley are the only truly well-developed characters here. Greg can be really terrible toward his friend, but it is only realistic for the kids of his age. I liked their friendship overall. The movie is very grounded in the portrayal of middle school children and how prone to accidents and aggression they are, but the bullies’ subplot felt typical and very clichéd.

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid is at its best when focusing on the adventures that the kids have. These sections are the most enjoyable ones and I wish that I had seen more of those. The dialogue is also quite believable given their age, but again not a single theme or message was to be found here. The comic-book style of the film worked, but the pacing was horrible and the movie was repetitious. The runtime of just an hour also led to a flick that did not have a lasting impact as it dissipates from your memory pretty quickly afterwards.