Middle School gets a passing grade
Film will strike a chord with preteens who just can’t fit in
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up,” Pablo Picasso once said. Another quote from the famous Spanish artist is cited in Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life: “Everything you imagine is real.”
Both are solid take-away messages for this goofy family movie, especially considering its protagonist Rafe (Griffin Gluck) is a prepubescent boy whose runaway imagination and talent for drawing gets him in trouble at school.
But Rafe isn’t exactly Ferris Bueller — he’s merely plagued by the presence of humourless figures of authority like the idiotic Principal Dwight (Andy Daly) and his mom’s sleazy boyfriend Carl (Rob Riggle). These are exactly the non-artist adults Picasso was referring to.
After being expelled multiple times following the death of his brother, Rafe starts at a new school halfway through the year alongside his best friend and partner in crime Leo (Thomas Barbusca).
There, Rafe runs afoul of Dwight’s tyrannical reign immediately. When the principal discovers Rafe’s unflattering doodle of him, he throws Rafe’s beloved sketchbook into a bucket of burning acid. Extreme, but it fits the movie’s cartoony esthetic, which also includes the occasional morsel of real animation.
Our plucky protagonist and his best friend decide to seek revenge by destroying Principal Dwight’s own beloved creation: his rule book. But Rafe and Leo can’t get thrown out of yet another school, so they plot secret acts of creative vigilante justice to break every single rule.
Middle School reminded me of 1990s children’s entertainment, especially Student Bodies and Matilda. Both were successful cultural products for their time because they understood the perspective of children at that critical age.
In Middle School, the humour is just as quirky and irreverent, as well as extremely self-aware — on more than one occasion characters cleverly refer to swear words without actually using them.
But Middle School is more than just a comedy. It tackles that very difficult subject of childhood grief — not perfectly, but not carelessly, either. The film will nonetheless still strike a chord with any preteen who doesn’t deem it “made for kids.”