Wes's Grade: BCharming, likable "Alexander" has fun having a bad day
The pleasant new children's movie "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" is a sadistic movie - but scrubbed up Disney style - and the film should really be called "Alexander and his family have a bad day." The movie follows the exploits of 11-year-old Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) as he experiences the most terrible and horrible day of his young life. He soon learns that he's not alone when his upbeat family, including mom (Jennifer Garner), dad (Steve Carell), brother (Dylan Minnette) and sister (Kerris Dorsey) all find themselves living through their own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Anyone who says there is no such thing as a bad day just hasn't had one. Directed by Miguel Arteta ("Chuck and Buck") and written by Ron Lieber and loosely based on Judith Viorst's best-selling children's book of the same name (and this adaptation was preceded by a 1990 animated special), "Alexander" is a delightful, lighthearted movie that has fun with people having very bad days, sort of a cleaned-up, less sarcastic "Malcolm in the Middle" that changes the main focus from the boy to the parents (mainly due to the A-list status of Garner and Carell, who have fun here slumming it a bit). Done the Disney way, it's all good, clean fun, and there's nothing wrong with that: a kangaroo, a job interview, Dick Van Dyke (yes, you read that right), Peter Pan, a permanent magic marker, and the prom are all thrown into the mix, with a few good laughs here and there. As the titular character, lisping newcomer Oxenbould is charming, though as mentioned earlier, unlike the book, the movie is more focused on the hijinks of his family, in a sitcomy, episodic type way and he's too often in the background doing very little. It's thin and in the end doesn't amount to much, but the pleasant, entertaining "Alexander" is a solid family movie, and if it's a hit, you may find it as a new series on the Disney Channel or ABC Family.
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