FUN SIZE
Director: Josh Schwartz
Cast: Victoria Justice, Thomas Mann, Jane Levy, Osric Chau, Thomas McDonell, Jackson Nicoll, Chelsea Handler, Johnny Knoxville, Thomas Middleditch, Anna Gasteyer and |Kerri Kenney-Silver
CLASSIFICATION: 13L
RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes
RATING: ***
This tween-targeted escapade manages to mesh sweet, tardy and heart-warming moments together.
The Halloween-themed set-up centres on teen absurdity, but mainly engages the family theme.
Invited to the school hotty’s Halloween party, Cleveland high school senior Wren (Justice) has to instead look for her missing baby brother.
The nerdy beauty was expecting a dull night of babysitting her mute, chubby and very creative menace of a brother Albert (Nicoll), but instead she gets a foolish Halloween adventure she was not expecting.
She takes the little one off trick or treating, but he pulls a disappearing act on her.
This disappearance is the seeming engine driving the comedy flick. Wren rallies a search team together in the form of fellow classmates Roosevelt (Mann), her secret crush, April (Levy) – her precocious best friend who couldn’t really care much and is not about to let her sexy kitten outfit go to waste – along with Peng (Chau), the horny nerd more interested in April’s boobs.
While the audience knows exactly what has happened to Albert, Wren does not and becomes frantic about finding her brother before her mother finds out.
Director Schwartz (creator of The OC and co-creator of Chuck and Gossip Girl) doesn’t steer away from crass humour or suggestive sexual moments, but he uses it tastefully to make for some hilarity.
Fun Size manages to evoke laughs and tug enough heartstrings to draw an adequate crowd and become an enjoyable watch.
There are quite a few amusing bits: a Josh Groban song, a store clerk named Fuzzy, their mother – played by Chelsea Handler (a widow having an affair with 26-year-old), and a cameo by Johnny Knoxville who plays a ludicrous villain, all add to the fun and craziness of the night.
The humour and heartening moments also extend to adults, so they should get a kick out of it too.
If you liked… Prom… you’ll like this movie.