Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

I was not a huge fan of the three previous Diary of a Wimpy Kid films, which were released annually from 2010 to 2012, however I did note in my review of the last film, Dog Days, that it was a slight upgrade over the first two.  However, now that I have seen The Long Haul, I realize that I may have been too hard on the earlier entries.  This is a desperate, chintzy and insufferably dumb children's comedy that somehow managed to end up on the big screen instead of straight to DVD where trash like this belongs.  It also manages to somehow be rated PG, despite having more jokes concerning urination, defecation and projectile vomiting than some R-rated comedies targeting adults that I have seen.

Even though this is not a reboot of the series, it does feel like one, as the characters have been recast top to bottom, due to the fact that many of the young stars are now too old to play them.  And while the first three movies were not exactly the peak of filmmaking, they at least looked like movies.  This one not only looks like a lame TV sitcom blown up on the big screen, there are awkward pauses in the dialogue that almost seem like they would be moments where the laugh track should chime in.  It would also seem as if returning director and co-writer David Bowers (he made the last two films in the series) has lost any sense of honesty for these characters.  While I would never call anyone in a Wimpy Kid movie "realistic", they at least had moments we could relate to.  Here, everyone is portrayed as a loud, obnoxious, over the top caricature of the people from before.

Once again, our protagonist is middle school kid, Greg Heffley (now played by Jason Ian Drucker), who gives us his insights into life and family through voice-over narration, and crude stick figure cartoons that he draws.  This time, Greg is dealing with social media humiliation when an embarrassing moment at a family buffet restaurant happens to go viral.  The only way he can see to redeem himself on the web is to appear in a YouTube video with his favorite Internet celebrity, an obnoxious guy who has made a living making videos about playing video games (Joshua Hoover).  It just so happens that his idol is appearing at a video game convention in Indianapolis, and Greg sees this as the perfect opportunity.  Unfortunately, it falls right at the exact same time that his mom (a miscast Alicia Silverstone) and dad (Tom Everett Scott) are dragging the family on a cross country road trip to celebrate their grandmother's 90th birthday.

So Greg, along with his dim-witted older brother Roderick (Charlie Wright), scheme to ditch the trip and make their way to the video game convention on their own.  The family trip makes up a majority of the running time, and basically seems like a more family friendly variation of the original National Lampoon's Vacation (the 1983 film, or the 2015 reboot - take your pick).  There are the usual pit stops, car trouble, overnight stays at scuzzy motels, and run-ins with weirdos that you would expect, although the movie can't find anything funny or interesting to do with anything that happens to the Heffley clan.  Case in point - In one scene, the family winds up inadvertently adopting a baby pig while visiting a country fair.  You would think that the pig might provide some problems or comical moments, but the screenplay is so bankrupt, the only thing it can think to do with it is have it poop in the car.  The family immediately drops the little oinker off at a petting zoo afterward, making the pig's addition completely pointless overall.

The main thing that kept me from embracing the earlier Wimpy Kid films is that I found them to have an unnecessary mean streak.  In The Long Haul, that mean streak has been replaced with an overabundance of gross out humor.  Whether you see this as an improvement depends on your tolerance for scenes concerning accidents with soiled diapers, people being splattered in the face with vomit on amusement park rides, and even a scene where our young hero is forced to hide out in a bathroom while a big, fat guy uses the toilet, with thundering farts and deafening plopping sounds playing on the soundtrack. (Believe it or not, this somehow leads to a parody of the shower scene in Psycho.) Maybe really little kids will find stuff like this hilarious.  I felt kind of nauseous.

I would like to close this review by recommending a much better kid's movie about a family road trip that this movie at times resembles a lesser version of.  That would be the 1995 animated film A Goofy Movie.  Both feature kids stuck on a lame road trip, and both are built around family bonding.  But that movie also had a heart behind it.  This exists only to steal money from bored families, in the hopes that possibly one more movie can be squeezed out. 

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