One teenage boy’s life is turned upside down when his home and school lives collide on a track of boredom. In “Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life”, Rafe (Griffin Gluck) has an epic imagination and a slight problem with authority. Both collide when he transfers to an oppressive, rule-crazy middle school where he doesn’t know a soul. Drowning in do’s and don’ts, Rafe and his scheming best friend Leo (Thomas Barbusca) hatch a plan to break every rule in the school’s Code of Conduct. It’s “Ferris Bueller” meets “Home Alone” as their battle with Principal Dwight (Andrew Daly) explodes into chaos both real and imagined. But Dwight displays his own fiendish creativity, striking back at the rule-breakers. Meanwhile, Rafe struggles to hide his misbehavior from Jeanne (Isabela Moner), the straight-A, overachieving girl of his dreams, and at home, his mother’s boyfriend; a moochy, jack-of-no-trades named Bear (Rob Riggle) threatens to become his stepfather against his wishes. “Middle School” is directed by Steve Carr, and is rated PG for rude humor throughout, minor adult language and thematic elements.
“Middle School” is a fine example of everything that is wrong with children’s movies in 2016. From the wincingly bad comedy deliveries, to the missed opportunities of paying homage to the kinds of trials and tribulations that kids face with peer pressures and internal changes, everything here is very difficult to even accept at face value. Those missed opportunities ringed loudly for 87 minutes of a script that felt very forced with the kind of direction and overall concept in tone that it was aiming for its pre-adolescent audience. I understand that this movie is based off of a series of highly successful kids novels, but some things translate differently to an alternate method of multimedia, and that’s a lot of the problem here. I was fortunate enough to see this movie with about 20 to 30 children in the audience, and to not hear them laugh at much more than the occasional fart joke or loud noise, cemented my thoughts for what little children will take from this movie. It really serves as more of an exaggeration on how kids view a new school, and that emphasis on exaggeration follows us through absolutely every measurable effort that this movie had to offer.
The acting is so sufferable, mainly from the grown-ups that play these stereotypical characters amped up to eleven every chance they get. I have never been a fan of Riggle, and that’s because his comedy serves as nothing more than yelling and animated facials that don’t serve well to someone who asks for a little more thinking in his comedy. Rob was right at home for this kind of movie because it requires him to be the single biggest jackass in his young filmography, and he couldn’t be having more of a fun time. The problem with his and many others performances is nobody acts or says these crazy things that come out of their mouths. The adults might as well switch places with the children because it’s very difficult to distinguish who belongs in what role. Daly also forces his material way too hard, and we get a villain that feels cheesy even for child standards. The fact that this movie insults children to the point that they know commanding figures don’t act like this is appalling. Everything that Daly’s character does in the movie is either against the law or highly unethical, but nobody cares because this is mostly a world without parents. The one positive that I got in the casting was from Adam Pally as hip, modern teacher Mr Teller. Pally’s chemistry with Gluck in particular gives us a brief glimmer of hope from a movie capable of letting us down. Adam’s delivery is one of the only honest telling in the movie, and he shined like a candle in the basement at night.
There’s also nothing special or meaningful that happens in this script. For the entirety of the movie, we get the forefront being Refe at his new school battling against an authority. Something we have seen plenty of times in much better movies before it. A fine example of something exaggerated that works is “Matilda”. For the subplot, we get Refe battling his rude and controlling stepdad at home. Notice something here? THEY ARE THE SAME PLOT FOR BOTH AREAS OF THE MOVIE. There is no relenting on repetition for this child or the audience watching in the theater, so a lot of the attitudes in plot consumption feels the same, and just doesn’t have a steady hand to play every emotion at the right time. Then something glorious happened. For about ten minutes at the beginning of the third act, there’s a plot twist that throws everything for a loop. I totally never saw this coming, and surprisingly it added a gentle touch to a movie that was cluttered with immaturity to this point. The twist works because it offers us a brief look into the mind of what it really means to be alone and cast out against society that already has a pre-conceived notion of who Refe really is. I was genuinely touched, and was hoping we turned a corner in attitude for the remainder of the film. Unfortunately, this is just used as a timid plot device, and the rest of the movie returns to a school that clearly takes place in a different dimension.
If you noticed the poster for the movie, you might have seen an animated background played against our live action characters in the foreground. This isn’t just used as a creative marketing ploy, but instead serves as this movie’s crossover emphasis on merging two different worlds of film (Animated and live action) for kids watching at home. This works in films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Cool World” because it plays with the on-going story. The problem with the usage here is that every time we cut to an animated scene, it slows down the progression of what little fluidity in story that we’re receiving, and serves to repeat what we were just told orally. For instance, there’s a scene in which Refe gets into an argument with a bully on his first day of school. The bully tells Refe to meet him after school so he can pound him. The next few minutes switch to animation, and it’s used as a call back of sorts to “Lizzie Maguire” to fill time for a flawed script. That’s one of my theories anyway. The other is the animation is used to showcase what they couldn’t from a minimal 8.5 million dollar budget. The animation is well interpreted enough, showing off Refe’s style of art, so there’s no problem in its design. More so on the usage for a movie that simply doesn’t need it. If the animation was used side-by-side with the story playing out in real time, it wouldn’t require us to stop every ten minutes to see what it would be like played out if the production only had money.
The soundtrack is pretty basic for kids movies. A barrage of top 40 pop hits play during multiple montages of the children getting their plans ready for evil suitors. This has always felt like one of the more conniving manipulative tricks, only used to sell downloads and be held hand-in-hand with the movie for the rest of that moviegoers life. It’s a further emphasis on no creativity going into such a film, and it only added in sound what we already knew about the movie in vision; pure crap.
“Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” is a movie on auto pilot for fans of its previous literature. Its overabundance of sugar influenced characters made for an obnoxious sit, and the conformity of a script with its lack of chances plays against the movie’s message of thinking outside of the box. This is a movie about kids that never takes the time to play it from an honest point of view for some kind of compelling drama. One that requires you to tread 80 minutes of rain to endure 10 minutes of sunshine.
4/10