'Diary Of A Wimpy Kid (2021)' is a poor excuse of an adaptation. In fact, it's a poor excuse of a film. It just feels incredibly lazy. There's no reason for the thing to run a measly fifty-eight minutes, especially not when it cuts out considerable chunks of its source material to do so. It also lacks any semblance of structure, seeming more like a series of skits than an actual cohesive story. Each segment only has the loosest of consequences, and the overall piece lacks any real sense of escalation. I've read that it was initially planned as an animated series, which may explain why it's so short and lacks a solid structure; it's just a series of episodes smushed into one barely-feature-length feature film. They'll probably pump out another fifteen of these (one for each book) in the span of about five years. It's really underwhelming overall. For something so short, it sure is dull. The animation is plain bad, with weirdly low-effort character designs and generally unconvincing movement. It would've probably been better if the picture retained the style it adopts for its first few moments, one which emulates the crude drawings of the book using 2D animation that looks as though it's occurring on wrinkled sheets of lined paper (i.e. Within the eponymous diary). The characters are paper thin, too. What's worse is that only one of them is likeable, and he isn't even the protagonist. I get that Greg is meant to be selfish, jealous and so concerned with being cool that he can't see what's truly important (or that the obsession itself is what's primarily preventing him from being considered so). However, there's no real characterisation outside of these negative aspects, which leaves you feeling totally alienated from him. You're honestly more likely to cheer than cry when he gets laughed at. Ultimately, though, this just feels like nothing. It isn't engaging and it isn't enjoyable. It genuinely feels like the filmmakers don't care about it. If that's the case, how could they ever expect us to? Also, Rodrick is only in it for (literally) about two minutes. #notmyrodrick. 3/10.
