You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

"It's got a hair in it!"

Okay, I confess. I still haven't seen Alice in Wonderland or several other movies I'd intended to see by now. But I went to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And I loved it. Well, I wouldn't say it's exactly enjoyable at every moment, but that's one of its strengths (and weaknesses, but I'll get to that in a minute).

I have never read the book on which this is based (though I did skim over it yesterday in the bookstore), but I'm sure some things are different. I know, for example, that the character of Angie (played by Chloe "Hit Girl" Moretz) was added. I also suspect, from what I gathered in snatches from the book, that canon Greg is a bit more likeable than movie Greg.

Greg is starting middle school. He's very excited about it, despite his older brother's best attempts to make it sound like a horrific experience. This movie, by the way, hits a lot of the same notes as a typical high school movie, complete with cafeteria anxieties. Greg is operating under the impression (delusion?) that he is pretty high up the popularity ladder (19, I believe, is the rank he gives himself out of 200-something). And he makes it his business to reach the top of that ladder as soon as possible. His first day does not go as well as he would like, and instead of moving up the ladder, he steadily moves down it over the course of the school year.

Something this movie - and I strongly suspect the book - does really well is deal with the complexities of popularity and the social aspect of school at this age. I also loved the movie's skewering of Greg's goal to become popular as an end unto itself. He doesn't seem to even want to do anything to become popular. He signs up for things but doesn't stick to them - notably wrestling, where he wants a quick weight gain fix instead of spending a few months working out in order to bulk up to get into another weight class. And he looks down his nose at his actual friends who he believes are dragging his cool quotient down. Ironically, and most satisfactorily, it is his "uncool" friend Rowley who actually becomes pretty well liked for doing what his mother told him - "just be yourself and people will like you."

In a way, this story reminds me of Emma, because like Austen's heroine Greg spends most of the story not being a good friend at all, while at the same time thinking he's doing all these "lesser thans" a favor by letting them be friends with him and giving them his world-weary advice.

And in a more personal way, it quite forcibly reminds me of my own childhood, and not in a warm, nostalgic way. Sure, things like the legend of the Cheese Touch hit my funny bone in that way, but I also can't help remembering that I was occasionally a jerk to my real friends, who were actually pretty awesome, in my own pursuit of popularity. It takes guts to write a character like that, particularly for a movie, and the risk is that the character's irritatingness gets in the way of the real charm and message of the movie. I'm afraid that, for many people, that will be the case with this movie. Greg does some truly despicable things, and maybe if he'd been played by another actor - perhaps not someone so cream cheese cute and more real, like the wonderful kids who played Rowley and Fregley and Chirag - he would have been more sympathetic. Zachary Gordon, partly because of his easygoing adorability, comes off as kind of a douche (can you say that about a twelve-year-old kid?) a lot of the time.

Very cute movie on the whole, though, and I hope they get to make the sequel. Something tells me this movie's better-than-expected first weekend will help make that a reality.