Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules – review

Kids in their early teens will enjoy this comedy based on a popular children's comic book about the humiliations and cheering fantasies of a 12-year-old schoolboy in Los Angeles with a quarrelsome elder brother, a little baby brother, a loving but over-solicitous mother and a bewildered father (a rather underused Steve Zahn). It's an episodic film, rather less interesting than its British director David Bowers's earlier work as an animator in Britain and America. His credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run and his feature debut as director, Flushed Away. This brightly lit film was shot by Jack N Green, a cinematographer noted for his mastery of chiaroscuro in such Clint Eastwood pictures as Unforgiven and Bird.