Here comes trouble!
The eponymous books are great, essentially based on the premise that kids are totally selfish beings ruled by their desires, and that these desires are in conflict with what their parents think is best for them. (Henry is the junior equivalent of Fat Freddy in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic books, ruled by the desires of his id: for food, drink, drugs and sex.) Kids like being on holiday, weekends, junk food, TV, computer games, lazing around, having fun, being rude, playing tricks on other kids. They hate school, homework, chores, getting up and going to bed early, being polite and well-mannered, eating proper meals, eating vegetables and so on. Their parents want them to do the opposite. With this conflict, kids are always in trouble. Perfect Peter, Henry's annoying younger brother, is essentially an idealised mirror intended, by contrast, to highlight Henry's character, who is in fact a pretty normal kid writ a little large.
What's good: the central kid's characters are well played: Henry (Theo Stevenson), Peter (Ross Marron), Moody Margaret (Scarlett Stitt) and indeed most of the other kids. Some of the adults rein in their performances sufficiently: Siobhan Hayes and Mathew Horne as Henry's Mum and Dad, Rebecca Front as the headmistress, Miss Oddbod, and Parminder Nagra as the teacher, Miss Lovely. Other adults portray their characters rather too large, too cartoonish, namely Angelica Huston (Miss BattleAxe), Richard E Grant (the head of Box Hill School), Jack Sanders as the gym teacher, Aerobic Al. Dick and Dom, talented comic creatives in their own TV shows (the "Mini Dick and Dom" shorts are brilliant), portray TV hosts so extremely unpleasantly nightmarishly styled that I wondered how they passed the censor for a U certificate.
There's quite a lot of breaking the fourth wall by Henry, which is OK, though used here rather lazily as a disguised voice-over to spoon-feed us backstory.
What's mainly wrong with this film, to my mind, is the script. The plot device of the kids having to save the local primary school is just so tired. And the idea that the head of the local private school would scheme to make money by getting the state school shut down and gaining fees from the desperate parents of kids from that school seems extremely unlikely. Also, the script is very laboured at times, with Moody Margaret metaphorically beating the audience over the head with key plot points that seemed obvious to me anyway.
Worse, the story betrays the characters of Henry and Peter at various points. The idea that Henry has had the self-discipline to become the lead singer of a fairly proficient pop band stretches credibility. And when Peter's rendition of the traditional canon "Frére Jacques" morphs into an extraordinary contemporary interpretation, it seemed like demonic possession. And when Henry, uncharacteristically altruistic, plots to save the school, it's as if he and Peter have swapped personas.
Annoyingly, the two ten-year old boys in my charge, though seemingly bored during the film, afterwards gave it 4 stars and 5 stars!
- Director: Nick Moore
- Writers: Lucinda Whiteley (screenplay) based on the books by Francesca Simon
- Starring: Theo Stevenson, Scarlett Stitt, Ross Marron, Anjelica Huston, Richard E. Grant, Rebecca Front, Parminder Nagra, Siobhan Hayes, Mathew Horne, David Schneider, Wladmir Klitchko, Vitali Klitchko, Noel Fielding, Richard McCourt, Dominic Wood, Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Tyger Drew-Honey, Kimberley Walsh, Helena Barlow
- Rating: Rental
- When seen: 14 Aug 2011
- Where seen: Cinema
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro
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