Alexander.And.The.Terrible.

Horrible.No.Good.

Very.Bad.Day.2014.

For 12 year old Alexander Cooper, everyday is a bad day. And his family thinks he's being silly because they never have a bad day. On the day before his 12th birthday party, he learns that another boy is having a party of his own and everyone is going to it. And another kid punks him online. So at midnight of his birthday, he wishes that his whole family can have a bad day. And things for the whole family go bad, his mom's car is broken so they have to share a car, his sister has a cold and has to go on stage, his older brother, who's hoping to get his driver's license and to bring his girlfriend to the prom, has to deal with his girlfriend's snootiness and fails to get his license, his mom has a crisis at work which could cost her her job, and his dad who has a job interview has to bring his younger brother with him but because his pacifier is broken he can't stop crying. Alex feels responsible.

User Reviews:

To be honest, I kind of expected "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" to be downright terrible. Nevertheless, I went to see it with my 10-year old nephew and while there were moments that I found to be downright bad, it recovers towards the end and it earns itself a mild recommendation. The title is, in this case, kind of a summary of the movie. Alexander is the second-youngest kid in the family. On the day where he is going to be celebrating his 12 birthday party, he and his family are going to go through one horrible ordeal after another and Alexander believes that it's all his fault.

What I didn't like about the movie is that even for a film that is a light-hearted family comedy, it got downright ridiculous and cartoonish at times. I realize that this is the day where EVERYTHING goes wrong, but come on now, I still expect the characters involved in the movie to act like human beings, not martians in a fish-out-of-water comedy. There are so many actions in which either nothing is explained or big events have absolutely no consequences whatsoever. OK maybe "no consequences whatsoever" is not the right terminology. Let me clarify. There's a car accident in this movie (you've probably seen in the previews or the movie poster that the family van is missing a door). It's not that getting into the car accident has "no consequences", because obvious somewhere along the line, they lost a door on their vehicle. It's that there are no "real world" consequences to so many of the actions in this movie. Let's say that I was polishing my super awesome, brand-new sniper rifle and I accidentally shot the Prime Minister. The consequences wouldn't stop at the fact that he has been assassinated and therefore, my politics essay would no longer be up-to-date. The police would be after me, the family of the guy would be grief stricken, people would swarm my family with questions and that third-grade schoolmate of mine who saw me point a chicken finger towards him and mutter "bang!" would be all over the news saying "I TOLD YOU SO!" There are no real-world consequences in this movie whatsoever. When a disaster happens, the plot just shows you the facial reactions of the Cooper family and they move onto the next ensuing catastrophe. Yes I realize that having the police involved would have slowed down the plot a lot, but you've got car crashes, things getting set on fire, people embarrassing themselves to the point where they'd want to move to a different city and a lot of property getting destroyed and none of it felt real in any way whatsoever. If this film had starred Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, it would have been a much more believable story.

What saves the movie from the ample bad comedy and nonsensical plot developments is the film's finale. It contains some nice messages about what's really important that I found to be really refreshing. I find that far too many children's films end up being kind of mean-spirited, like something along the lines of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", which features similar humour to this film. I still wouldn't call the movie great, but there were little things here and there that I did enjoy. I enjoyed the message about being confident in who you are, about facing adversity head-on no matter how bad it looks and I actually enjoyed the characters in the film themselves. For me, the highlights of this film are not the big stars that are Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner, but Alexander and his two older siblings, who have some nice camaraderie between the three of them and were good enough that I wouldn't mind seeing them again in another movie. Credit to Ed Oxenbould as Alexander, Dylan Minnette as Anthony and Kerris Dorsey as Emily. There's something about Kerris Dorsey that I find kind of fascinating, maybe it's her look or mannerisms, but I'd be excited to see her again (even if her "very bad day" is downright ridiculous and cringe-inducing).

What really saves "Alexander and the very bad, no good, horrible, awful day" is that despite the moments where the characters act in ways that are just so stupid you want to bury your head in your bag of popcorn, it is kind of sweet in the end. It's a harmless movie, the kind you can tolerate as an adult because it does pick up significantly in the end. I wouldn't call it a great movie and even in the terms of family films, you can do a lot better with some of the other releases this year, but if your kids want to see this one, it's not a horrible, awful, very bad experience. (Theatrical version on the big screen, October 30, 2014)

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