Ah yes, the dog days of summer, summed up like our memories in Alice Cooper’s “Schools Out” and young Greg (Zachary Gordon) plans to lounge around the do video games. But his father, Frank (Steve Zahn) has plans for him to intern at his office. The problem for Greg is that if he interns at the office, he can’t get close to Holly (Peyton List) his one true love…. Unless of course he fakes a job at the Country Club, after fake befriending the chubby kid at school Rowley (Robert Capron.)
And so a series of highly-entertaining adolescent lies ensue in a highly-successful franchise of films (this is the
third and just as funny) capturing the awkwardness of adolescence. It’s a throwback to our own yesteryear as we remember that everything was overwhelming and apparently really crowded. And big. Like the town’s common pool, where his little brother, Manny (Owen Fielding) pees. Or the corridors at his school on the last day, when Holly gets interrupted and leaves two digits off her phone number.
This is the most entertainment any adult will have this summer, let alone the kids you’ll bring to the theatre. It’s this generations Home Alone full of messages on the meaning of family but delivered without shoving values down
ones throat, and instead, organically easing us into life through the eyes of a tween. Diary of a Wimpy Kid proves
you don’t need foul language, blood, sex or blow ups to be laugh-out-loud funny and to garnish four tiaras.