Parent Review of Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer

We received free passes to see the movie Judy Moody and the not Bummer Summer this weekend.  To be honest I would have been quite unhappy if we had paid a lot of money to see this movie as a family.
To say that this movie is mostly a disaster from start to finish is true.
The books by Megan McDonald in the Judy Moody series are so cute!!  But something got lost in translation along the way.
Here is how we rated this movie:
Dad  C-
Mom  C
7 year old boy  B
10 year old boy  B-

To say that this movie is mostly a bore is how I would generally describe it and having the word "bummer" in the title seems very apropos.  The movie starts with Judy making plans for her summer with her friends only to find out that two of them are going away and doing fun things on their own.  Her parents then let her know that her plans are all for naught since her Aunt is coming to take care of her and they are going to California by themselves. I had hoped that the movie would pick up when the fun aunt came to stay, but that was not the case.  She leads them through a number of unsuccessful activities while Judy's friends are at Circus camp and traipsing through the rainforest in Borneo.  Much of the movie is Judy being unhappy about her lack of fun and activities over her summer break.  She finally decides to try to help her brother with his quest of capturing Bigfoot and some of the movie comes together while that they are on this quest.

The two redeeming qualities of this movie are the brother Stink (played by Paris Mosteller) and the Aunt (played by Heather Graham - a nice treat to entice the fathers to come along for this one).  The brother is hilarious even though he is trying to be annoying (even this doesn't work well).   There is also a small role played by Jaleel White (remember Urkel???)  who we wish we had seen and heard more from.

The books by Megan McDonald in the Judy Moody series are so cute!!  But something got lost in translation along the way.
For parents still considering taking their children to see this movie, there is NO bad language at all.  The Aunt uses the word "crap" and is scolded by Stink that crap is a "bad word".  There is no sex or even mention of it.
The one thing I can say about this movie is that it is a very clean movie which we could recommend for a child of any age.  If your child is a fan of the book series they might really enjoy seeing the characters brought to life in this movie.  Please leave me a comment if you see this movie!