Film Review: Fun Size

Fun Size. Rated PG (mild sexual references, crude humour and coarse language). 86 minutes. Directed by Josh Schwartz. Screenplay by Max Werner.

Verdict: A meander through very familiar teen romance land that constantly threatens to mean something.

When it’s not scraping around at the bottom of the barrel for laughs, Fun Size manages to deliver more than enough entertaining moments on its run through familiar teenage romance/dysfunctional family territory with some contemporary tweaks to keep it interesting.

Wren (Victoria Justice) has been invited to a Halloween party by her ‘crush’ Aaron (Thomas McDonell), but her mother Joy (Chelsea Handler) informs her that she is going to have to baby-sit her little brother Albert (Jackson Nicoll) instead. With best friend April (Jane Levy) in tow, Wren takes Albert out for ‘trick or treat’, only to lose him in a haunted house – providing lovesick nerds Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) and Peng (Osric Chau) the perfect opportunity to come to the rescue.

Werner’s (TV’s The Colbert Report) screenplay is at its best when it breaks the rules of engagement (Albert doesn’t speak, Roosevelt has two mums, and Joy is desperate for her relationship with a much younger man to succeed against all the odds). Regrettably, it too often takes the soft option by pitching itself at the lower end of the crass and/or pointless scale, which only manages to sabotage the interesting plotlines that are struggling to be noticed.

Schwartz (the creator of TV’s The OC in his directorial debut) keeps the film’s sense of perilous suburban adventure ambling along and is well-rewarded by his talented young cast who take to all the shenanigans with great commitment. Thomas Middleditch (The Campaign) has a ball as the isolated Fuzzy, the young man with a revenge fantasy against his ex-girlfriend, and who meets the lost Albert when he sells him a Slurpy. The screen time these two unlikely anti-heroes spend together represents both the best and worst of what Fun Size offers, which is a film that constantly threatens to be more meaningful than it ends up being.

Pictured: Fuzzy (Thomas Middleditch) and Albert (Jackson Nicoll) in a scene from Fun Size.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.