Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016)
Directed by Steve Carr
A quiet teenage artist Rafe Katchadorian has a wild imagination and is sick of middle school and the rules that have been put before him. Rafe and his best friend Leo have come up with a plan: break every rule in the school hand book and as you expect trouble follows.
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What critics say influenced Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
Channeling the spirit of John Hughes and playing like a tween version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life delivers an easily digestible and amusing portrait of youthful hijinks that should well please its target audience.
Movies such as “Better Off Dead” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” have done a great job of bringing the high school experience to surreal life, but “Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” has left the junior high nightmare untapped.
This fantastic hybrid of High School Musical and Over the Edge is destined to become a cult classic for Generation Z in the same way that Heathers and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were for Generation X.
That is, of course, except for Mr. Rooney in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
Gluck doesn’t have the easy, boundless charm that Matthew Broderick did in this film’s spiritual predecessor “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but he has sweet, obviously affectionate relationships with his mother Jules (Lauren Graham, of "Max" ) and his younger sister Georgia (Alexa Nisenson).
Although its illustrative breakouts, sibling rivalry and endless pranks invites comparisons to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, it actually more closely evokes the works of John Hughes, especially Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club, with its emphasis on "stopping the fun being sucked out of childhood".
Others will find Middle School doesn't stand out from other quirky American high-school-based books that have become movies - Diary of a Wimpy Kid comes to mind.
Based on one in the series of kids’ books co-authored by James Patterson, who’s turned himself into a publishing juggernaut by parceling out the writing to a small army of collaborators and has also been trying to establish a foothold in the movie business with his own production company (and, unless I’m mistaken, has a brief cameo here as an angry restaurant owner), the picture is a pretty dismal retread of territory already covered in the three “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movies, which were hardly great shakes but were nevertheless better than this.
The beginning has a strong “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” vibe.
Although its illustrative breakouts, sibling rivalry and endless pranks invites comparisons to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, it actually more closely evokes the works of John Hughes, especially Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club, with its emphasis on "stopping the fun being sucked out of childhood".
Although “Middle School” leans a bit too hard on current pop-culture references to reach its target audience—like when hipster teacher Mr. Teller (Adam Pally, of "Iron Man 3" ), sympathetic to Rafe’s challenges, compares the process of collaboration to a mixtape between the rappers Drake and Future—it does well with its casting choices.