Fun Size

 

In Fun Size, we get a very busy Halloween night for pretty teenage girl, Wren (Nickelodeon TV star, Victoria Justice), and her oddball superhero-obsessed kid brother, Albert (Jackson Nicoll).  Wren initially hopes to spend the night at a party being held by the school hunk, but her mother (Chelsea Handler) has a date planned that night, so Wren gets stuck accompanying Albert as he goes trick-or-treating.  At some point during the night, Albert wanders off on his own, and now Wren has to spend the rest of the night looking for him.

Sounds like a simple enough plot, right?  Hold on, we have quite a few supporting characters.  Probably more than a movie needs, let alone one that only runs for 90 minutes.  First, we have Wren's best friend, April (Jane Levy), who accompanies her on the adventure, and is the school sexpot.  We also have Roosevelt (Thomas Mann), Wren's geeky other friend, who naturally has feelings for her, but doesn't know how to express them.  It's no surprise that by the end of the movie, Wren will realize that Roosevelt is the right guy for her, and not the popular guy she thinks she's in love with.  We also have Fuzzy (Thomas Middleditch), a lonely convenience store worker who was recently jilted by his girlfriend, and feels that pulling a Halloween prank on her is the best way to get revenge.  Let's not forget the oddly-named Keevin (Josh Pence), who is the new boyfriend of Wren's mom, and turns out to be a total flake by the end of the film.  There's also Jurgen (Johnny Knoxville), a psychotic lunatic who is currently dating Fuzzy's ex-girlfriend, and ends up kidnapping little Albert and holding him for ransom.

All this, and I'm still forgetting Roosevelt's lesbian parents, the party girls who pick up little Albert and take him out clubbing while Wren is searching the streets for him, Roosevelt's equally nerdy best friend (Osric Chau) who gets in a fight with some bullies at a local chicken restaurant, Keevin's parents who have a heart-to-heart talk with Wren's mom, convincing her that she should be there for her kids more often, and the subplot involving the fact that Wren and Albert's dad is dead, and Albert hasn't spoken a word since then.  How many characters and how much plot does a movie like this need?  It's almost as if screenwriter Max Werner (TV's The Colbert Report) just kept on adding to his script, and didn't know where to stop.  What's wrong with just making a silly little comedy about some kids who get in trouble on Halloween?  Why does it need the lesbians, and the psychopath who takes the kid hostage?  Come to think of it, the psycho character should have been the first to be written out of the movie.

Fun Size is a production of Nickelodeon's film division, and is being marketed heavily to kids and "tweens".  Parents should be advised that this is the studio's first PG-13 film, and it's a surprisingly hard one, containing quite a bit of strong language, numerous references to sex and nudity, alcoholism, violence, and a scene where a giant plastic chicken on the roof of a restaurant falls down on the hero's car in such a way that it looks like the chicken is humping the back end of the vehicle.  I'm left perplexed as to who the filmmakers intended this movie for.  It's far too raunchy and adult for the usual crowd that watches Nickelodeon or goes to its movies, yet at the same time it's much too juvenile for an adult audience.  This is a movie that was made for no audience that I can imagine.

Amongst the ruins of this film, I can point out a couple fleeting bright moments.  Lead actress Victoria Justice is quite beautiful and likable, and I hope to see her in a real movie sometime soon.  I also have to admit to laughing at a reference to a "sexy Ruth Bader Ginsburg" costume.  Made me wish the movie had gone the smarter route with its humor.  But far too often, Fun Size plays it as dumb as it possibly can.  The humor is mostly made up out of forced sight gags and weak sexual innuendo.  There is stuff in this movie that could have worked (such as the teen romance between Wren and Roosevelt) if it had been set free from all the other plots that constantly bury it.  And why does this movie try for a sentimental ending if the last scene completely goes against it?

 

This is a very bad movie, and I can tell I'm not the only one who thinks so.  The fact that it's being released only days before Halloween is a sign that the studio hopes it will be gone from theaters in a week or two.  This could have been a fun little holiday movie for kids.  Instead, it comes across as being dumb, vulgar, and not much fun for anyone.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com! 

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