August 10th, 2010 
rberry 
Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is one of the most horrible series of books for children ever written. Greg, the “hero” is simply a jerk to the core. He cheats, lies, is genuinely cruel and insenstive to all around him, and his redemptive acts only emerge once he’s painted into a corner and has nowhere else to go. Tom Sawyer might trick kids to do chores for him, but he was never truly mean. Even Bart Simpson has a good side and makes a genuine effort to be a good friend to Milhouse. Greg’s “friend” Rowley is a loveable buffoon who is bullied and manipulated to shameful levels, and forgives Greg in the lamese of scenarios.
My son loves the books, and I’ve read them to him. Sure, some of antics were funny, and I thought the comic book within a handwritten journal was a unique method of telling a story. But looking back on the 4 installments, and after watching the film, I’ve become pretty sickened by the character and his story.
The movie is a near literal adaptation of the first book. Surprisingly so. Greg, as played by Zachary Gordon, is an unappealing, annoying character who reeks of awkwardness. For those unfamiliar with the story, Greg starts middle school and is obsessed with sticking out and being popular. He has a hapless but loveable goof of a pal Rowley who is pretty much a whipping post for Greg who belittles and hurts him throughout the movie. After nobody else will be his friend, he makes ammends and they’re all good again. There’s really not much more to it than that, save some fun interludes of some troublesome school and trick or treating situations.
I’m not a prude, and can enjoy a movie where someone’s a jerk as much as anybody. But the hero’s journey in this sorry tale is almost non-existant, and he’s not enough of a bad guy to even pull off the anti-hero.
If your kid loves these books, then they’ll likely think this movie is just fine. But I’ll just have to be the snob and say that the whole “Wimpy” franchise is a giant piece of shit, and would be more accurately titled, “Diary of a Cowardly Jerk”.
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Greg is a buffoon. An imbecile. He’s not dealt a crappy hand by life, he repeatedly digs his own holes and lies in them. He’s a one-note character who never receives any comeuppance, never atones for his faults, and never grows as a person. That is where the fault in these books lie. However, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was never intended to be a real book. Jeff Kinney began the saga as a daily updated online feature, similar to a newspaper comic, later collected and published in print form.
In a way, this explains Greg’s character (or lack thereof). There’s not supposed to be any continuity or grand storytelling elements. He exists solely to drive a gag-a-day narrative with a loose, overarching plotline. He’s as well constructed as Marmaduke or Garfield.
Greg was designed as a narcissistic, self-absorbed, entitled jerk, and by laughing at his shallow nature, we see a reflection on how tasteless it is to act like a narcissistic, self-absorbed, entitled jerk. There is absolutely no way anybody could read these books and interpret Greg as a noble figure, but he was never intended to be seen that way. He’s just a douchebag we’re all allowed to point and laugh at.
Sorry Robert, at the end of “Huckleberry Finn” Tom Saywer behaves is such an evil fashion that even Huckleberry is taken aback by what a supposedly “well-raised” boy can do.
Tom allows Jim to suffer as a prisoner and doesn’t tell him that he is actually is free. (Mark Twain ends the book on a rather bitter note.)