Wimpy Kid Makes Friends, Some Enemies

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is like your average middle schooler—loved by some, hated by others. Reviews, in short, are mixed. Here’s what critics are saying:

• “It is so hard to do a movie like this well,” but Diary of a Wimpy Kid pulls it off, raves Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. “It's nimble, bright and funny. It doesn't dumb down. It doesn’t patronize.” It even deserves mention alongside the glorious A Christmas Story.

• “But to anyone who’s seen even an evening of kids’ TV over the last decade,” this will look awfully familiar, writes Stephen Whitty of the Star-Ledger. It’s fine, but why spend money on this instead of watching Nickelodeon?
• “Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a movie that needs to go back to the drawing board — literally,” says Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. The source books and their doodle artwork were charming, but “live-action Greg Heffley is a jerk.”
• “Greg “seems like a real kid,” Claudia Puig writes in USA Today, Star Zachary Gordon makes him “likable even when bursting with bravado or insolence.” The result? A “silly-sweet” movie that’s worth seeing.

(More Diary of a Wimpy Kid stories.)