Runtime: 1 hour, 21 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Miguel Arteta
Quick Impressions:
If you like beautiful babies with big gorgeous eyes and expressive faces, then you should love Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The sweet, heart-warming family positive comedy has a lot more to offer than just a pretty face, but adorable Baby Trevor could probably carry the movie single-handedly.
At several moments, I thought, Wow, what a beautiful baby! That child has such an expressive face! That’s the most photogenic movie baby I’ve seen since Neighbors. I don’t remember cinematic babies being so conspicuously easy on the eyes when I was younger. Where are they finding all these beautiful children suddenly? This baby even looks like those gorgeous twin girls from Neighbors. I wonder if they’re related. I wonder if those girls have a brother? Maybe it’s the same twins. But no…they would be older by now, wouldn’t they?
Well guess what? You can’t imagine my delight when the end credits revealed that adorable little Trevor is actually played by Elise and Zoey Vargas, the very same beautiful twins who played the gorgeous baby girl in the movie Neighbors back in May. For this film, they just gave them more masculine hairstyles, I guess.
“I knew it!” I cried in delight, startling my husband who had no idea what I was talking about.
I tell you, if you’re a woman of childbearing age, and you’re not already thinking, Why am I not pregnant right now? I need a baby, you certainly will be after watching these gorgeous infants—such big, expressive eyes—stealing this movie for nearly ninety minutes.
Meanwhile, my daughter was busy noticing another uncanny coincidence. In a late scene featuring the parents simultaneously taking separate important phone calls in the kitchen, she whispered to me, “Hey, this is very similar to our family. Don’t you think so?” As the end credits rolled, she turned to my husband and asked, “Hey Dad, have you ever chased a kangaroo?”
Honestly, we only went to this movie because our five-year-old was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad end to her week, and we were looking for realistic options for making the weekend fun and cheerful for her.
Initially, I was extremely skeptical about this movie. The early previews did not impress me. I wasn’t exactly surprised that Disney decided to “adapt” Judith Viorst’s famous picture book into a feature length film. (I was surprised that my husband—whose favorite show as a kid was Reading Rainbow—had never even heard of the book, let alone read it, but maybe that’s because he lived overseas when he was very young.) Studios have a long history of co-opting the titles of very short children’s books and slapping them on almost completely unrelated movies. So I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t impressed, either.
As time went on, though, I began to soften toward Alexander. A few days ago, we were watching one of my daughter’s Disney shows when an extended preview for Alexander came on during the commercial break. As we all started laughing in spite of ourselves, my mom remarked wisely, “Steve Carell can make anything funny.”
The Good:
Steve Carell can make anything funny. He also doesn’t rely on excessive profanity or crudity or sexual shock humor, so he can be just as funny in a G-rated movie as in an R. (That’s definitely not the case with all comedians.) Most of the laughs in the movie come from Carell’s ability to make almost any material funny. He’s got great comic timing and a gift for pulling off even the silliest jokes with winning panache.
The rest of the cast is pretty good, too. I found that Jennifer Garner complemented Carell’s comedic chops by bringing a realistic melancholy to her role as the working mom who enjoys the success and needs the income but hates sacrificing the time with her kids.
Children would like the movie even without all of Garner’s fine little dramatic touches (which they may not even notice), but her well timed anxious faces, regretful glances, and longing looks at her baby practically made the movie for me, a thirty-something mom. The comedy is sweet, sometimes giggle inducing, and (almost) always inoffensive. But the real strength of this movie is its sweet and oddly realistic (despite the bizarre circumstances) sense of family camaraderie.
Carrell has some fine dramatic moments, too. (His scene with the trashcans is pretty great, and he brings a lot of depth to the character overall.) Garner also has some terrific moments of comedy. But the reason the movie works so well lies in the union of Carell’s successful comedic moments and Garner’s moving dramatic looks.
The rest of the cast is pretty winning, too. Among the kids, baby Trevor is the clear standout. But Ed Oxenbould (Alexander), Dylan Minnette (his older brother Anthony), and particularly Kerris Dorsey (as sister Emily) are all likable and engaging, too. And Disney star Bella Thorne makes a very convincing and amusing vapid, shallow girlfriend. (I’m not implying that Thorne herself is shallow or vapid. I’m just saying she’s good in the part. There’s not much to the character, but she plays her well.)
I thought it was nice to see Megan Mullally, Jennifer Coolidge, and Donald Glover in supporting roles (though none of them is given much to do). (My husband and I really chuckled at Mullally’s thoughts on when Alexander’s mom can see her children, though.) Burn Gorman definitely makes the most of his small role as drama teacher Mr. Brand. And Dick Van Dyke has a delightful cameo appearance.
This movie has a simple plot, not quite as simple as the picture book, but still pretty basic. In the book, elementary aged Alexander has a bad day one day. (That’s pretty much the point of the book. Everybody has a bad day sometimes, “even in Australia.” That’s just life.)
In the movie, twelve-year-old Alexander has a bad day every day. (Welcome to middle school). Then at midnight on his birthday, he makes a special wish that everyone else in his family would know what it’s like to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
The one sophisticated element of the plot is that it’s kind of a call-back to previous Disney movies like Freaky Friday (which they keep remaking endlessly). Disney is crazy about “one ill-conceived magic wish that changes everything” stories. In the past, they’ve been insanely over reliant on variations of that premise. So there’s a nice, fresh twist on that “magical bad thought voodoo” concept here that I think makes a good lesson for kids in and of itself. Just as the picture book tells kids it’s normal to have a bad day sometimes, the movie reassures children that they need not feel guilty about occasional, unpleasant stray thoughts. (No, Uncle Joe did not fall off the roof and break his neck because you felt angry at him for a minute. You don’t have that kind of power, and it’s normal to have “bad” thoughts and feelings sometimes. Most kids aren’t Carrie.)
I think the film very wisely keeps the one really memorable part of the book—Alexander’s attachment to Australia. Frankly that’s the only part of the book that’s stuck with me over the years, that catchy refrain about wanting to move to Australia. (What’s crazy is that lately I’ve caught myself in unguarded moments of media driven panic thinking, Ebola in Dallas? Maybe we should move to Australia. Maybe Alexander’s right. There seems to be plenty of room in Australia, a chicken in every pot, and two koalas in every yard. Maybe that’s a great solution to all our problems!)
Best Scene Visually:
Baby Trevor is the visual highlight of the movie for me. Not only are twins Elise and Zoey Vargas absolutely stunning in their beauty, but they have such expressive faces. I’m sure the director and the editor deserve a lot of the credit for this, but Trevor’s face is sometimes the funniest thing about a scene, especially after the job interview.
The peeing scene also becomes highly amusing, mostly because it goes on for so long. As I was watching, I thought, I wonder how many takes this took. It must be hard to show that much pee and preserve the child’s modesty. And how do you control the pee stream? I wonder if he’s actually peeing or if it’s all CGI or something. And then of course, as I discovered at the end of the movie, Trevor is actually played by two girls.
(These are things I never imagined that I would even contemplate. But now that I’m a parent, I know how easily changing a diaper can turn into a messy debacle. It doesn’t seem like a very easy process to control on camera, particularly when you want to be careful for the baby’s sake how much of his body you show.)
This bit is one that really works well because it’s legitimately a crazy disaster, and yet it’s one that could happen so easily (and definitely would happen if you ran out of diapers). It’s both outrageous and realistic.
Best Scene:
The movie really comes together in the scene in the Teppanyaki place. It’s a moment of heightened comedy followed by one of well-played drama for Steve Carell. Dylan Minnette and Bella Thorne also do some nice work in this scene.
Best Action Sequence:
One of the things that initially aggravated me about this movie’s previews is the scene of Steve Carell fighting a kangaroo. I kept thinking, Why in the world would anybody (particularly a suburban dad in the United States) think it was a good idea to fight a kangaroo? Even very violent and unrealistic children’s cartoons have shown us that is a terrible idea.
But in context, Carell isn’t really attempting to fight some random kangaroo. Instead, he is merely chasing a kangaroo in an attempt to detain him. That’s still a very bizarre and questionable choice, but it makes more sense while you’re watching it happen, and Carell plays it as the kind of thing that could realistically happen if you’re in a temporary euphoria caused by minor parenting success. It’s pretty fun to watch.
Probably the most exciting action sequence, though, is Emily’s performance as Peter Pan. Her older brother’s reaction is pretty fantastic.
Funniest Scene:
I absolutely love Jennifer Garner’s outburst in the car when her son gets uncomfortable on their way to school/work. It makes a pretty clichéd/potentially lazy moment earlier really pay off. And it seems like a surprisingly bold joke for a PG movie. Even though it’s kind of daring, though, it rings incredibly true, and that’s one of the things I like best about the humor in this movie. (I’m actually planning to talk more about that in the “negatives” section).
The Negatives:
This movie isn’t trying to be a ground-breaking cinematic achievement. It’s just a sweet little film about a loving family facing common difficulties and sticking together during the course of one extraordinarily bad day. For what it is, it succeeds brilliantly.
I do think they have too many rallying family huddles. It seems like once the movie really hits its stride and the chaos of the bad day is underway, every five minutes one of the family members is rounding the others up for a rousing pep talk. The movie is only 81 minutes long. I’m not sure this needs to happen so many times. You almost get the idea that they’re stalling, trying to stretch that scant runtime just a bit.
I mean, it’s great to know that the Coopers plan to stay together, and that the son has learned from his father’s positive example, and that the father continues to be encouraged by his son’s love, but seriously, we don’t need a re-dramatization of this every other scene. It starts to feel not only repetitive, but pace breaking.
Another thing that’s a little baffling is Steve Carell’s decision to put on a pirate blouse and agree to do something that could be easily postponed. The movie truly irritated me at this point. I found myself thinking, Well, okay, I’ll go along with this lunacy because you’ve been a sweet little movie up to this point, and you’ve really made me like you. But come on.
Just because your twelve-year-old thinks something is a great idea, um…the twelve year old also thought he put a curse on the entire family with a magic wish, so…
The thing is, up to that point, there have been time constraints and deadlines that couldn’t be pushed. But now, Carell’s character really could easily choose to postpone this event until a more convenient time. Earlier there’s a scene when Jennifer Garner’s character says something like, “We just bit off more than we could chew today.” Uh huh. So now that you’ve admitted that, why are you adding new things exactly? That’s not really the responsible choice, and I found it quite hard to believe that the father would do that.
I also found the outcome of the day for the parents a little bit surprising. One parent’s fate is pretty much what you expect the whole time (because there’s really no reason to think it would work out otherwise). But as for the other…I don’t know. I see that the results are good, but that is a pretty huge mistake. I’d think twice if I were the person in charge. (I don’t think the movie is as realistic as it might be here because I don’t think it can be. If the outcome were different, you’d create a situation that the film is probably trying to avoid because it doesn’t seem like a very progressive view of the way families should operate. But wow, I am not sure I would have such confidence in a person who made such a huge error—because the thing is, you get the good results whether you keep the person who made the mistake or not).
And if I’m being picky, I think they could have done more with the driving test scene, too. The phone bit is funny, but what happens here is so lazy. Surely some slightly more inventive outcome would be possible.
Anyway, I’m willing to overlook all of these little annoyances because the movie is sweet and charming and really speaks to families.
I’m pretty sure there will be some people who question the PG rating, though. A lot of stuff happens that maybe you shouldn’t joke about. For one thing, the daughter’s misadventure with cough syrup is played off as some crazy, ill-advised misadventure, and then they all go to dinner, hahaha. (She needs to be home in bed.) Perhaps it’s a bit irresponsible of the movie to downplay (though tacitly) the significance of such behavior. I mean, honestly, it is not a good idea to drink an entire bottle of cough syrup. Taking more than the recommended dosage of medication is actually far more common than abuse of illegal drugs, but the drugs don’t know if they’re illegal or not. I’m not sure if you’re imperiling your life by drinking an entire bottle of cough syrup, but I wouldn’t recommend testing how much cough syrup you can non-lethally drink by the trial and error method of continuing to drink cough syrup. Also, when you’re feverish and almost certainly contagious, you should not be serving food at a children’s party.
Similarly, the mother yelling about penises and the baby peeing all over the kitchen are going to seem like crude choices for a children’s movie to some people. (There’s a borderline risky joke near the end, too. And the Dick Van Dyke scene has some crude humor.)
The thing is, all of these things show a level realism that I found surprising and endearing. Would a teen actor cast as the lead in a school play actually chug an entire bottle of cough syrup just to prevent the understudy from replacing her on opening night? Um, yes. Any teen actor I know. I’m pretty sure that I would have made that choice under those circumstances, and my much more talented sister would probably have drunk an entire case of cough syrup rather than miss curtain. That’s actually surprisingly realistic and pretty funny.
The “penis” part is pretty great, too, because what she says is true, and I kind of appreciated it. You really don’t expect an adult to yell the word “penis” again and again in a children’s movie, but…why not? The character makes a good point. There is nothing dirty about the word penis, and there’s no reason to mystify it. The joke is good precisely because it’s not crude in any way.
Overall:
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day will not have you rolling in the aisles with laughter, but it does have quite a few genuinely funny moments. What makes it worthwhile to me is its wonderful, endearing, heart-warming sense of family. The Cooper family comes across as both real and relatable, and while the things that happen to them are a little crazy, their broader problems are pretty typical of most contemporary families, and nothing that goes wrong is really all that off the wall in context.
A far better movie than I expected it to be, Alexander should certainly entertain school aged children and their parents. It definitely cheered up my five-year-old and got her weekend off to a positive start.