FilmSnobReviews

Title: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
MPAA Rating: PG
Director: Steve Carr
Starring: Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Alexa Nisenson
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins

What It Is: Rafe (Gluck) is an artistic young man struggling with school. From his head being stuck in the clouds to his nose in his notebook. He’s been kicked out of every middle school in the general vicinity, except one. This particular school is run by Principal Dwight (Andy Daly) a man who is obsessed with the scores his school receives in standardized testing. To assure those scores are as high as can be Principal Dwight has a very strict game plan for how his school is run. With the help of his friend Leo, he’ll try to break some of these rules and put the fun back in his school.

What We Think: Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. It tries this weird pseudo-animated thing a few times in the movie. Instead of helping all it does is bog the film down. Rob Riggle is in this and he does Rob Riggle things by being a giant douche. This is not to say I don’t like him I do but he is always like this. Lauren Graham doesn’t get much to work with here and she’s relegated to single mom dating douche bag (see the previous sentence) which is slightly above her. I will give a kudos relative newcomer Alexa Nisenson for her role as love interest/AV geek Georgia. She gave motivation while still coming across as a smart young lady.

Our Grade: D+, Not  a total failure but narratively it is flawed. It does what it wants to do but that does not excuse it from being an overall bad movie. For having so many children their performances are not too bad, but the sloppy writing and hack editing sink it before it ever had the chance. I’ll recommend you go ahead and skip this one unless you must see it.