Key to successful children’s films in the modern era, at least those that aren’t animated, seems to be coming from the realm of book adaptations. Finding a successful series of books and coupling them with an unknown star, a modest budget and a high profile character actor or actress and you have the recipe for success. Diary of a Wimpy Kid followed this to massive amounts of success and now comes Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, hoping to replicate that formula.
Based off the “Judy Moody” novels by Megan McDonald, the film follows the titular character (Jordana Beatty) as she sets off to have the best summer of her life. With her wacky Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) around to spice things up, and her younger brother Stink (Parris Mosteller) to annoy her, Judy has to find a way to keep herself entertained as her friends seem to be having a much more exciting and interesting summer than she is.
John Schultz is no stranger to live action films aimed at children, with a fairly extensive history in the genre, and as such it’s not shocking that he’d be one to handle this, but he’s been handed a bad hand to play. This is a film that relies on a fairly inexperienced cast of child actors as well as a poor script that culminates in one of the worst things to happen to children in a movie theatre in a long time. Having inexperienced and marginally talented children is one thing but the film’s faults lie in a script that does no one favors.
Even though many of the thrills Judy, Frank, Rocky and Amy embark on throughout the movie are unrelated and fail to uphold a cohesive plot-line, director John Schultz made a good choice in hiring Beatty to play the adventurous main character. Producer Sarah Siegel-Magness has rightfully said that because the books are “both character-driven and extremely visual, we felt it was important to find kids who looked exactly like the book characters.” After she asked McDonald what her image of Judy was, the writer found Beatty on-line, and pushed to have her cast, even without meeting her. McDonald’s faith in Beatty paid off, as she not only looked like the character as illustrated by Peter Reynolds in the books, but she also perfectly carried every scene.
Beatty was convincingly able to portray Judy as being upset and neglected that she was being left behind by her friends and her parents for the summer, something many kids feel when they are left alone. Kids will also be able to relate to Judy when she wanted to lock herself in her room until September because her thrills weren’t going as well as she hoped. But Beatty proved that bad situations can always be turned around; the actress said that her character, like herself, “is a fun-loving person who always has a plan (But) most of the time, her plans don’t go the way she wants them to, but afterward she realizes she’s had a good time anyway.”
Children, particularly those who have read the Judy Moody books, will certainly like and appreciate the humor and characters in ‘Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer’ the most. As McDonald has said, the children are the ones who discovered the book series, as their teachers never heard of them until their students started reading them. McDonald truly cared about catering to her core audience when she wrote the script, which is rare in Hollywood, where many people solely care about reaching as many people as possible to make more money.
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