Walt Disney Pictures, 21 Laps Entertainment, The Jim Henson Company,
Jennifer Garner, Steve Carell, Bella Thorne, Jennifer Coolidge, Megan Mullally
Alexander Cooper’s (Ed Oxenbould) day is starting out really awful. His birthday is coming, and everything is going wrong. When he gets the chance to make his birthday wish, he simply wishes the rest of the family could understand what a terrible day is like. It appears he has cursed his whole family on a very important day as his wish comes true. See, Alexander’s family doesn’t understand how hard it is to be a young boy today. His Dad, Ben (Steve Carell) is the ultimate optimist. Mom (Jennifer Garner) isn’t much better with her gung ho attitude. But today is an important day for everyone, and it’s going very, very, very badly for all of them. The family needs to pull together to get through this and life through till tomorrow.
This is a family film, and so it follows the line of dozens and dozens of other Disney live action films that go back to the 50’s and 60’s. Likewise, it’s based on a book, like a number of the other films of this genre. But that’s exactly how Walt did it too. He’d find a book that his daughters loved and made it into a film. With this film, you get exactly what you would expect which burns up a lot of people. There are many haters out there. This is not “American Pie” or “Superbad” and it never tries to be. It’s been a good while since we’ve had a good family film like this, and with the appearance of Steve Carell as the Disney family Dad, he’s not bad at all at it. He does his best to be a cool guy, but the bumbling Michael Scott character comes out when he’s trying his best, but everything is literally burning down around him. I thought it was really funny, in a PG sort of way that is appropriate for youngsters, especially boys. There are lots of good pre-teen girl movies out there, but the boys typically get either cartoon superheroes or sports movies, which are good in their own right, but it’s nice to see a family togetherness movie aimed at boys. So if your kids haven’t seen it, it’s out on DVD now, so be sure to spend an evening and watch it with them. It’s not spectacular cinema and special effect explosions, but it’s got a lot of childish humor and it really is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
