Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A quiet teenage artist Rafe Katchadorian has a wild imagination and is sick of middle school and the rules that have been put before him. Rafe and his best friend Leo have come up with a plan: break every rule in the school hand book and as you expect trouble follows.
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is a competent family comedy adaptation that captures the spirit of the popular book series. The plot is engaging for its target demographic with a reasonably clever rule-breaking premise, though it follows a fairly predictable arc with a telegraphed emotional twist. The acting from Griffin Gluck and Andy Daly is solid for the genre, though nothing transcends the material. The live-action/animation blend is a nice touch that gives the film some visual personality, but cinematography is otherwise unremarkable and workmanlike. The film has modest novelty in its animated imagination sequences and the meta-narrative conceit, setting it slightly apart from standard middle-grade fare. The ending leans heavily on sentiment and wraps things up too neatly, with the emotional reveal feeling manipulative rather than earned.