Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer IS a Summer Bummer

When I was a kid, I always had “bummer” summers. I was happy to be out of school, but every day was melting, we rarely went anywhere or did anything, and we didn’t even have cable. I could empathize with Judy Moody, and on my quest to find movies that are wholesome for my youngest relatives, I decided to give it a try. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer left me with a “m’eh” feeling.

The classroom scene in Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer seems to rely on the fact that the audience has some familiarity with the book series, as the “pop quiz” given refers to past books. I have no familiarity with the books because I was way too old for them when they came out, but it wasn’t a difficult part to get through if you didn’t know what the characters were talking about. Oh, and Mr. Todd was played by none other than Jaleel White, who was the first star I ever loved. He led the class in a sing-along on a banjo. All he needed was suspenders and to exchange the banjo for an accordion, and I felt like a kid again. That was probably the best part of the movie, though.

At some point, I just stopped liking Judy Moody, the character. Probably around the time she decided she was going to save her summer by stealing her brother’s thunder – she literally wanted all of his fame. Who does that? I have younger brothers, and I may have been jealous of them at times when we were kids – but I would never steal their thunder, especially not when they worked so hard to get the recognition! She was also a really horrible friend. She forced her friend Frank to do everything she wanted to do and then got mad at him if it didn’t work out the right way. One time it was clearly Frank’s fault – he crammed himself full of food before getting on a rollercoaster – but most of the time, Judy was just making his summer bad.

Another little nitpick I had with the movie was its use of animations and stuff to show Judy Moody’s imagination. First of all, it felt reminiscent of last year’s Ramona and Beezus, especially the tightrope scene. Secondly, bad CG doesn’t improve a movie’s quality at all. Bad CG is forgivable if the story is strong enough to cover it, but traditional animation may have been a much better fit for the movie.

I did love Heather Graham as Aunt Opal in Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, however. Aunt Opal is very similar to other Heather Graham roles, where she’s a hurricane of free spirit that can’t be stopped, but around children the trait is endearing. It’s almost as if the role of Aunt Opal was written specifically with Heather Graham in mind, because I cannot think of anyone else who would have filled that role so well.

Preston Bailey played Frank, Judy’s second best friend whom she was always picking on. Looking at Bailey’s filmography, he’s Cody on Dexter as well as having been in The Crazies and a made-for-TV remake of Children of the Corn. That’s not a kid I would want to pick on. Preston Bailey is so adorable, though, and he played the role well. You feel really bad for him when Judy calls him a fun mop, and you understand his fear when he thinks that Bigfoot is in Judy’s backyard and he only wanted to drop off a backpack. Frank was my favorite character besides Aunt Opal.

Probably because of the fact that I lost interest in Judy as a character, however, the movie seemed to drag on forever. I was mildly entertained with car chases and circus scenes, and I can’t really think of anything that didn’t need to be there, but at some point I felt like the movie was just sucking up my life.

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer was in some ways a cute movie. There was nothing offensive about it; but nothing about it is worth the price of a movie ticket, either. It’s a good movie to catch on DVD if you’ve got kids to entertain, but other than that, I would not recommend it.