Fun Size (2012)

movie was bad bad story bad writing bad acting bad talking i do not know how to spell the other that,s why i said talking bad jokes a little boy gets kidnapped by Cubans,s that sounds funny doesn't it and of course the car crash were no one is hurt that is just stupid oh my god it is boring if no one gets hurt think people think for god sake wheres the mom where is the mom oh of course having good times with Cubans real good parting there leaving your kids alone and the award goes to the jokes and what joke you ask this one fart thats the funniest joke in this movie god save me take me away from this movie pretty please

Fun Size- *1/2 (out of four): There are more laughs and more fun in an episode of "Victorious" than in this farce of a film, which would have fared better had it been released straight to DVD. It is crudely written, the teenage qualms seem entirely artificial and clichéd. There are some funny and even sweet moments in it, but the bad outweighs the good here. It tries to pay homage to older (and better) teen flicks of the '80s, but it falls far short, emerging as little more than a comedy full of gags and stereotypical characters. It might be enjoyable for a small minority of people, but I'm sure most will be quite bored by it. Definitely one to skip.

Never have I seen a Nickelodeon movie packed with more foul language, drinking, illegal behavior, and sexual references than Fun Size. The title, and the fact that it's a Nick movie, falsely implies that parents should take their kids and go see it. False, as this movie is supposed to target high school kids as its primary audience. It does have jokes in it that kids would find funny, but in my mind, it's pretty inappropriate to be viewed by younger kids.That's not to say it isn't entertaining. There's lots of hit-and-miss going on here, with about half of the jokes actually succeeding in being funny. I did laugh out loud several times, which is the only reason I'm rating this at a 5/10.The plot itself is very weak, and we wonder why the police aren't assisting Wren in finding her brother. Also, the girl who is supposed to be her best friend doesn't seem the least bit interested in helping her. And the two boys who like Wren, one a jock, and one a geek, look almost identical. Then the subplot involving the little brother and a dorky convenience store clerk who wants revenge on someone, which we never really find out why, at least I didn't pick up on it. ("I'm not luring a little kid into my car.") Wren's father just recently passed, and her mother is dating a 26 year old moron who lives with his parents. (Why, you ask? My guess is they needed a reason for the mother to be leaving the house for the night.)To summarize, there were some pretty funny moments, but as a movie, it's below average at best. Definitely not Nickelodeon's best work, by a long shot, but at least I don't feel like I wasted 90 minutes of my life. 5/10

Nickelodeon Movies made a gamble with Fun Size which, while it wasn't as successful as I'm sure they wanted it to be, has nonetheless made the company seem like more risk-takers than, I believe, the public thought they were. Despite baring the name of a popular kids' TV channel, most of their projects have been uphill marketing battles attempting to acquaint the public with different plots and new characters that weren't introduced on their networks. There have been a number of films banking off their own characters, but Nickelodeon Movies doesn't play it safe when it comes to making family comedies or dramas. They stray from the nest and that's an honorable thing.However, one must expect when a company does what Nickelodeon Movies is doing, the result is all over the place. Fun Size, their second PG-13 film, attempting to usher in a more tween/teen fanbase (I suppose), is the company's latest film. It merges the likes of John Hughes-style teen comedies and Adventures in Babysitting schtick to create a relatively harmless (at least by the company's program-standards) but ultimately forgettable endeavor in the formula of misunderstandings and chaotic mishaps. This is, yes, another entry in the tired genre I call, "maximum antics, minimum laughter," a film that has so many different setups and quirky events that it forgets to make them funny and entertaining.Our story concerns unpopular high school teen Wren DeSantis (Victoria Justice - take one look at her and you know that in no American high school would she be unpopular), who lives with her irresponsible mother (Chelsea Handler) and her psychotic deviant of a brother named Albert (Jackson Nicoll) in a classic suburbia setting. It's Halloween, which is, of course, the holiday Wren's town goes crazy trying to celebrate, and her and her friend April (Jane Levy) are invited to Aaron Riley's (Thomas McDonell) Halloween party where he might, just might, sing a song in Wren's honor. She is lovestruck.Yet, the same night, Wren's mother is going out with her much younger boyfriend and leaves Wren in charge of Albert. Her and Wren reluctantly take Albert trick-or-treating, but not long after, he goes missing in the huge town of Cleveland, Ohio and this leaves the two friends confused and without a clue. That sweet-talk the hell out of their nerdy classmates Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) and Peng (Osric Chau) to give them a ride to help them look all over town to find the little tike and, as you imagine, trouble of unprecedented caliber ensues.Victoria Justice, who is gifted here as a conflicted teenager, has unfortunately been placed in the center of the mediocre teen-sitcom Victorious, which airs daily on Nickelodeon. The show is one of the many programs targeted towards kids that features smiley teen faces reciting poorly written lines that are foreign to the way high-schoolers truly behave. They treat emotional resonance as the lowest form of sympathy, human interest as an unheard-of concept, and humor as a non-existent device. One thing Fun Size capitalizes off of is cursing, which for a Nickelodeon-billed movie, is quite an accomplishment. It's definitely significant, and provides the film with a bit more realism with the way teenagers talk and communicate than shows like Victorious or movies like Prom willfully neglect. I'm not saying in order for a teen film to be realistic and be successful is to welcome cursing (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a wonderfully poetic and immensely successful film concerning the lives of three outcasts, worked well without swearing more than a few times), but when you see teenagers calling each other "nubs," "geeks," or use phrases like "nerd juice," do you see reality or an augmented version of it? While Justice's capabilities as an actress stand out, most of the film is on autopilot and most of the characters are remarkably unremarkable. Albert, who utters only two words in the entire runtime of the film for reasons never explained, is a brat; not a character to sympathize with at all, but one to unsympathetically put in an institution. His misbehaving acts, incredibly hyperactive attitude, and schematic tendencies do not show us likability in any way, shape, or form. Wren's friend April, another self-indulgent character, only upset about the fact that she is missing the party being thrown by the hottest kid in school, is not even remotely likable, either, and Roosevelt and Peng are simply love-interests and helpful nerds that come in the nick of time.This is director Josh Schwartz's first motion picture after quite a resume of primetime cable programs, none of which I've seen. There's a competence to his work, but it isn't significant enough to distinguish from the other films of similar style we've been bombarded with over the years. Writer Max Werner pleasantly evokes realism through dialog, yet relationships are shortchanged in the long run for continuous idiocy. The other big issue I can find with Fun Size is that it's demographically confused. It's a tad too adult for kids under ten and eleven, and those over fourteen are a little "too old" for this kind of material. Much like Prom, there's a strange lack of a demographic here, that always seems to young or too old.Fun Size, also, features one of the most immature, juvenile, and off-putting movie endings in quite sometime, which shows the darkside of Albert, as if his personality already wasn't dark enough. In the long run, like a "fun size" candy-bar, it's sweet, easy to swallow, but not memorable after, say, half an hour. It provides spry, quick-witted closure for those brave enough to seek it. There's not too much wrong with that.Starring: Victoria Justice, Jane Levy, Thomas Mann, Osric Chau, Thomas McDonell, and Chelsea Handler. Directed by: Josh Schwartz.