One of those little movies that could: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'

By Sarah Sluis

It's hard for adults to review movies targeted towards a kids-only audience. After reviewing Grown Ups, an adult movie with some kid flashback scenes, I was reminded of all the films about childhood friendship I watched again and again. These were movies that described the childhood experience for me, or even made

it better. The kids had loyal and close friendships, and, to jealous suburbanites, the ability to ride bikes to the candy shop instead of having their parents drive them everywhere. They solved mysteries (The Goonies and countless others), and the creepy boogeymen in their town turned out to help them in times of need.

However, those pictures don't always get the best reviews. One tiny gem I saw in theatres was Golddiggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain. As an eleven-year-old girl, I fell squarely into the narrow target for the movie, and loved it. I remember being disappointed when I saw it quickly disappear from the box office marquee (it only earned just $5 million).

Suspecting that my enjoyment of the movie was somewhat biased by my age, I took a look at a couple of reviews from the time. Variety totally panned it, but the always-thoughtful Roger Ebert said it reminded him of the "Hardy Boys" novels he used to love, and acknowledged that eleven-year-old girls such as myself may prove a rapt audience:

"I have a rule that I never, or rarely, write things like "not my cup of tea, but sure to be enjoyed by young girls." I am going to break that rule, because foolish consistency, as we know, is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Gold Diggers is not my cup of tea, but it is sure to be enjoyed by younger audiences, and although I don't think it will hold the attention of adults, I do not require adults and children to be alike in all things."

One such movie that may fall into this category is Diary of a Wimpy Kid. After opening to $15 million, it made four times its opening weekend gross, $60 million. By comparison, solid releases make two-and-a-half times opening weekend, so this movie displayed signs of being a word-of-mouth success--despite a 54%, mixed, Rotten Tomatoes rating. The film's performance was enough to warrant a sequel, Roderick Rules, which is being set for a March release next year.

While this movie certainly received an extra bump from being based on a book, its ability to depict what it's like to be thirteen must have really resonated among young boys. If you take into account the adage that girls are willing to see movies about boys but not vice versa, you end up with the whole under-thirteen crowd clamoring to get their parents to take them to Wimpy Kid. However, it's quite remarkable that a movie targeted to such a narrow audience could earn $60 million. Though I didn't see the film, the trailer is filled with both goofy scenes and ones that must seem revelatory to a pre-teen audience: discussions about delayed puberty, embarrassing parents, and figuring out girls. As we've seen with the failure of such genre-bending movies as Jonah Hex, which tried to combine several types of pictures (Western, action, comic book, sci-fi) into one, sometimes sticking to one thing and nailing it can work much better. Diary of a Wimpy Kid may not have the rabid fan base of Twilight, for example, but both films immensely pleased their narrow audience, and were rewarded for it.