The Summer of Ugh rolls on at the movies, with the popular kid-lit entry Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer receiving the first of what Relativity Media no doubt hopes is a long, fruitful string of Moody screen adaptations. So far, not so good -- at least on the critical front, anyway, where detractors nationwide are actively urging parents to avoid exposing their kids to the film's hyperactive, kaleidoscopic rubbish. (It currently rocks a 17 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.) How bad is it? Let Movieline count the ways:
9. "Kids will find this ADD adaptation to be the equivalent of chowing down several bowls of sugary cereal in quick succession. Adults will feel like they've just endured a Ludovico treatment of nonstop Nickelodeon-channel programming." -- David Fear, Time Out New York
8. "In Judy Moody And The Not Bummer Summer -- an ice-cream headache of a film inspired by Megan McDonald's Judy Moody children's-book series -- Heather Graham stars as possibly the first wacky, quirky, painfully effervescent MPDG [Manic Pixie Dream Girl] in charge of cheering up a sullen grade-schooler instead of a sullen man in need of romantic rescue." -- Tasha Robinson, AV Club
7. "[I]t wouldn't truly be a film for the entire family without squirts of animal urine, displays of chewed food, sprays of vomit, and the near-consumption of fecal matter. How else would kids know when to laugh? Sigh." -- Brian Orndorf, BrianOrndorf.com
6. "It's a film so obnoxiously frantic that its most restrained element is a banjo-strumming elementary school teacher played by none other than '90s tween-mugging icon Jaleel 'Urkel' White." -- Nick Schager, Village Voice
5. "The MPAA needs another rating for movies like Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, something opposite of NC-17 that doesn't allow children to see movies that could warp them. Something like NC-10, so anyone over that age is also turned away for their own good." -- Steve Persall, St. Petersburg Times
4. "Judy Moody is less a summer-fun story than it is the kid-film equivalent of 'shock and awe,' a bombardment so brutal that it leaves you cowed and crumpled in the force of its full-frontal assault." -- James Rocchi, MSN
3. "Idly I began to wonder whether my 9-year-old self had it right on this subject, as on so many others: Maybe girls are simply far more boring than boys? The boy-centric Diary of a Wimpy Kid looks like Lawrence of Arabia in comparison to the squinched vision and lack of imagination here." -- Kyle Smith, NY Post
2. "This third-grade, possibly Ritalin-added ghoul, whose ingenuity as an interior designer implies she owns Milton Bradley's Mouse Trap (unlikely) or highly regards Pee-wee's Big Adventure (possibly), is not preferable to your average Bieber fan, whose sycophantic behavior at least feels recognizably human." -- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
1. "I'm holding everyone reading this personally responsible. It's not enough to simply not go to see it yourself; you must also discourage others from seeing it. And anyone writing me to say, 'Oh, leave this alone. It's a kids movie,' well you can go right on down that special road to hell paved with VHS copies of MAC & ME. Kids shouldn't have to be subjected to this garbage any more or less than anyone else." -- Capone, Ain't it Cool News