New on DVD: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

If he's got to go through this torturous time, he's gonna do so in style. 

His body may be small, but he's sure his brain is huge. And with a little creative planning and some pecking order manipulation he'll be at the top of the social ladder in no time. 

The plan has to work. It's his only hope since his home is no safe refuge. Between a sadistic older brother (Rodrick) who would rather rub his nasty armpits on Greg's face than actually talk to him, and an un-potty-trainable kid brother who gets all of his parent's adoring attention, Greg feels lost in the wasteland of tween obscurity.

His first "look at me" attempt school-side, though, doesn't work out so well. Being a wrestling team sports hero is tougher than

it looks. Especially since runny-nosed outcasts and pigtailed girls can toss him to the mat with ease. Even his overweight and completely hopeless best friend ends up getting more positive attention than he does. 

So it's on to the next idea. And the next. But each can't-miss scheme somehow keeps blowing up in his face. Until the unthinkable happens: Greg contracts a horrible case of ... nuclear cooties.

When author Jeff Kinney's best-selling series of Wimpy Kid novels started hitting bookshelves in 2007, they hooked young readers with a fun comic-book-meets-novel blend. Each edition contained short, sharply funny tales and winsomely appealing stick figure drawings. Each was presented as if it were Greg Heffley's doodle-covered journal. Each could be read through in an afternoon.

Some parents and kids loved the novels' acerbic take on tweens' tribal travails. Others felt the central character fell well shy of a good role model. 

"I can definitely respect the argument that Greg is flawed," Kinney said in a wickedlocal.com interview. "In fact, that's where all of the humor of the book comes from--his flaws and imperfections. I think that parents that complain about that aren't getting the joke, and don't realize that their kids understand that Greg isn't perfect, and that's what makes him funny."

Does it? On film, at the very least, the answer is emphatically no. Greg is wincingly clueless about how his bad choices can impact family and friends, and when those choices are made by a flesh-and-blood kid on a giant movie screen instead of a little pencil drawing in a pseudo-journal, everything takes on a much more negative feel. 

That's particularly true when Wimpy Kid veers into an obsession with body functions and fluids. Seeing a stick figure accidentally peeing on his brother or sitting on a school toilet is quite a different experience from seeing kid actors doing the same thing in living color. And when those embarrassing bits are mixed with an endless goopy stream of booger-urine-poop-fart jokes, you very quickly begin longing for a notebook of your own to keep you otherwise occupied. 

On the way out of the screening I attended, I overheard an adult comment that 20 years ago Diary of a Wimpy Kid might have been his favorite film. And while I had a distinct feeling he was being very generous, I sort of understood. I remember a point in my life when the movie's "this too shall pass" encouragement to kids and its friend-reclaiming ending would have seemed thoughtful. I also remember a brief window of time when the mere mention of the word pee would have left me doubled over in childish laughter. I'm not so easily impressed anymore. And it might be that kids these days aren't either. 

This little conversation also drifted in my direction after the film: A mom asked her 6-year-old escort, "Did you like it, big guy?" The tyke screwed up his brow and replied, "Uh ... no." 

Maybe we just have a better grade of kids today. And if that's true, it's high time we made a better grade of film for them to see.