A road trip in need of a rest stop
THIS is the fourth of the series of films based on Jeff Kinney’s bestselling children’s books, which are close to my heart because my youngest son loved them.
But the sub-title, though it relates to an incident-strewn, 47hour road trip across the United States, rather sums up what it felt like to sit through to the movie’s end. It is a long old haul indeed.
The last film in the series was five years ago, so the cast is a new one, though the director, Dave Bowers, is a Wimpy Kid veteran.
Unfortunately, neither he nor his co-writer, Kinney himself, manage to imbue this story with either surprises or charm. Crass, heavy-handed and predictable comedy attend every tribulation suffered by the hapless Heffley family, and above all the spectacularly accident-prone Greg (engagingly played by Jason Drucker). So, on the long journey to visit the Heffley grandmother (rather annoyingly referred to as ‘Mee-Maw’), there are lavatorial and vomit jokes aplenty, many of them extracted from the inevitable stay in a ghastly motel, where Greg falls foul of a fat man with a beard.
Still, a young audience will probably find it all a hoot, and the performances are strong.
Alicia Silverstone does solid work as the long-suffering Heffley mum, and Chris Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew, Nicholas Cage’s brother) just about manages to make his bearded man comic rather than sinister.