How to Eat Fried Worms
The new kiddie gross-out movie ``How to Eat Fried Worms" will not appeal to two types of people. The first is anyone who feels squeamish about worms in general and especially worms that have been microwaved or pureed or fried into blubby lumps and then (deep breath) consumed.
The second group consists of anyone who holds dear the original 1973 book by Thomas Rockwell (Norman's son, purveying a rather subversive version of his dad's Americana). Several generations of kids have turned the page with bated (or baited) breath, waiting to see whether Billy will slurp down another wriggler and win his $50 bet, but the filmmakers toss the book over their shoulders and start from scratch.
There's a kid named Billy, and he eats worms on a dare, and that's about all the movie has in common with its source. Truth to tell, that's all the movie needs to have in common with its source. ``This is really disgusting," my 9 -year-old's friend whispered to her during the screening. Then he added , ``But I like it."
From a parent's viewpoint, two feet higher off the ground, ``How to Eat Fried Worms" is lackadaisical stuff, easily the least of the unpretentious children's book adaptations produced by family-ori-ented Walden Media (``Because of Winn-Dixie," ``Hoot," ``Holes"). If it grows more genial as it pokes along, it still feels like a lesser Nickelodeon special, with adults who are shrill cartoons and kids who are one-note character tics.
New kid in school Billy (an uncharismatic Luke Benward) stands up to class bully Joe (Adam Hicks) by taking a dare that he can eat 10 worms in one day. Joe's minions scamper to collect the crawlers and come up with suitably foul ways of preparing them, even as Billy tries to hide the fact of his nervous stomach and keep a helpful classmate -- a girl, ewww -- at arm's length. The girl is played by Hallie Kate Eisenberg, once the cute li'l tyke singing in Aretha's voice in those Pepsi commercials, and with her graceful new height and way with a bow and arrow, she's much the classiest person here. Needless to say, the movie wants nothing to do with her.
``How to Eat Fried Worms" is a boy movie in word and spirit, and it plays like a Little Rascals short with a few messages about being true to your conscience folded in for nutrition. Most of the calories come from the worms, which alive or parboiled (none were harmed during filming, you'll be glad to know) are given close-ups worthy of Garbo.
Eventually, we learn that Joe is a bully because his older brother (Nick Krause) is a thug, and that the gang -- Twitch, Techno, Plug, Benjy -- will come to his emotional rescue even after switching sides to Billy. ``How to Eat Fried Worms" gets that right, at least: the way kids create social groups that, if they're young enough, fluidly split and re-form several times in the course of a lazy afternoon.
It's the grown-ups who are stuck playing cliches: the ramrod principal (James Rebhorn), the idiot history teacher (Andrea Martin), even clueless, well-meaning old dad (Tom Cavanagh , miles away from ``Ed"). Wouldn't it be interesting if one of these kiddie movies did the math and hinted that its young heroes will grow up to be these people?
No, that would be scary; scarier than eating worms, anyway. ``How to Eat Fried Worms" ultimately keeps the compact of the book by insisting its hero's icky dilemma is the most important development in human history -- until dinnertime, when something else will have come along. The movie has a pleasing skinned-knee innocence that makes you wish everything else about it wasn't so shoddy.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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