The fourth in the popular Wimpy Kid series has the put-upon Greg (Drucker), a pre-teen Malcom in the Middle, up against it again: when a restaurant play area snafu results in him coming in close contact with a nappy, the recorded incident is posted online and goes viral. Cringe. But when mum (Silverstone) forces the family into a holiday in a bonding exercise, Greg manipulates the journey so the family swing by the big game expo where his hero, game vlogger Digby (Joshua Hoover), will make an appearance. Battle Digby in a game and he can claw back some street cred…
The Wimpy Kid movies were never a bastion of smart cinema but they were fun, tapping into that pre-teen viewpoint where life lumbers from one embarrassing disaster to the next. But the signs here show that the franchise is a dead duck: a location move/road trip always hints that the writers are running out of ideas, and the original cast have moved on.
The latter is understandable when it comes to Zachary Gordon and Devon Bostik (who played hero Greg and his dastardly older brother respectively in the previous three outings), as they are probably too old to play their characters now, but obviously Steve Zahn and Rachel Harris (playing dad and mum) have had enough. This shouldn't matter in a movie like Wimpy Kid 4 but the cast had chemistry – especially Gordon and Bostik who had a ball bouncing off each other – and here the newbies are still finding their feet in an episode that works too hard to get the few laughs it offers.
Drucker is fine but Charlie Wright's (a dead ringer for Justin Long) older brother lacks the evil menace Bostik boasted, and the situations the family get into fail to get one giddy (they inadvertently win a piglet, they stay at a creepy motel, Greg irritates a big bearded man). Once in a while there are some gags that will garner a snigger – a puking episode on a Wall of Death – but it's time to call it quits now.