SnoopyStyle
Billy Forrester is the new kid in school. He gets picked on by school bully Joe Guire who supposedly has a death ring. He punches with his poison ring and the person dies in the 8th grade. The bullies put worms in his lunch but Billy fights back. Then Joe spreads the rumor that Billy said he eats worms. The kids start calling him Wormboy. Billy tries to talk back but it ends up as a bet. Billy has to eat ten worms or else he has to come to school with worms in his pants. The other kids are afraid of Joe. Erika is on his side but she gets bullied for being tall.This is an old fashion gross out kids movie. The little kid inside of me had a lot of fun as the worms get eaten. It's childish without being sarcastic. The kids are cute. Even the villain is understandable. In the end, there are nothing truly dangerous. They get into mayhem without hurting anybody. It wraps up in a nice moment. This is a sweet gross kids movie.
princebansal1982
This movie has an interesting premise and all the actors have done a good job. But there is not enough plot to make it past 40 minute mark. However movies just goes on one hour after that by repeating the same things again and again.I can't argue with the intentions of the movie. It is a very well intended and sweet family film. It is about bullying and friendship and about kids being kids. But there is a lot of repetition. I think I would have loved it if it had more plot wise.As it stands now, I would recommend it only for kids. Adults are just going to get bored after half an hour.
Ali Catterall
Among the American Library Association's '100 Most Frequently Challenged (ie challenging) Books Of 1990 - 2001', Thomas Rockwell's classic children's novel 'How To Eat Fried Worms' sits at number 96.Quite why it was deemed fitting for the ALA's sinbin, alongside such horrors as 'Mommy Laid An Egg', 'My Brother Sam Is Dead' and the ever-popular 'The Boy Who Lost His Face', is mystifying. As a classmate observes in Bob (The Banger Sisters) Dolman's very loose screen adaptation, "normal people don't eat worms." Well, not normally, but if there's a matter of personal honour at stake, boys of all ages will do all kinds of impossible things.In Rockwell's original novel, our young protagonist Billy is dared by his pals to scoff 15 fried worms in as many consecutive days. Should he succeed, he'll win a mini bike. If he loses, he has to cough up 50 greenbacks, along with those masticated worm segments.Upping the ante, the screen version of How To Eat Fried Worms sees 11-year-old Billy (Benward) obliged by fifth-grade despot Joe (Hicks) to eat 10 of the squirming critters in one day - else take a shuffle of shame down the school corridor with his pants stuffed with live nightcrawlers. For Billy, a dweeb-magnet in a new school, the task is further complicated by the fact he's already got a weak stomach. What follows may cause those of a squeamish disposition to mislay the contents of their own.If you've seen one worm devourment, you've seen them all, so to hold the interest, Billy's slithery snacks are given the Nigella makeover, with dishes called things like 'The Barfmallow', 'The Radioactive' (steamed in a microwave) and 'The Fireball' (drowned in chilli sauce); a flair for home economics previously unheard of in rough-and-tumble fifth-grade boys.Will Billy win the bet? Well, there's so little suspense involved - after the first wriggler's taken the train to tummytown, Billy has little trouble polishing off the rest - that it's pretty hard to care. Plus, it's difficult to believe that by forcing down the unsavoury fare, poor Billy will win a new-found respect and cease to be called 'Wormboy'. If anything, the reverse would be the case. One imagines him starting his first day at the stock exchange, and a fellow trader saying, "Hey... aren't you the guy who ate the worms?" Naturally, this is all secondary to the real message, driven home with the subtlety of a chainsaw; that bullies are made, not born, and if we only took time out to understand their problems we could unite both sides of the Gaza Strip. We're in Stand By Me territory, with that movie's blend of gross-out humour and heartfelt adolescent bonding, and those elements don't always prove such a digestible mix here.That said, Dolman's a good director of kids, able, as Herr Lipp of 'The League Of Gentlemen' would undoubtedly say, to "put himself inside an 11-year-old boy". Hicks, as the bullying and bullied Joe, is standout. The frankly horrifying rumour that one punch from Joe's 'death ring' will lead to a belated death by perforated ulcer in the eighth grade is a fine example of adolescent psychosis. While exchanges like "His mind told his vomit to stay inside his stomach." "Impossible!" "Yeah, puke has a mind of its own," would fit quite comfortably in a 'grown-up' comedy.The best line, though, is the one about an old woods-dwelling woman who the kids are afraid of: "Some people call her the two-headed witch. Know why? Coz she had two heads once. But one fell off."
jake_gyllenhaalic
I really liked the movie. I remember reading it several times as a kid and was glad to see a movie had been made about the book.I was kid-sitting for a boy and a girl, ages 11 and 8 and had to talk the girl in to seeing the movie. But happily, at the end, she was glad she saw it and even said that she wanted to buy it on DVD as soon as it came out.There were some great laugh-out-loud moments and the movie was not as "gross" as I expected it would be ... tho it did rank pretty high up there on the gross-o-meter ...The only thing I cannot figure out is why they had to have the "dilly" line in there that was done by Woody in reference to his private part ... that to me was the only shocker moment (and you could hear the adults in the audience audibly gasp at that moment in the movie) ... I have no clue why that was put in the movie; it added nothing to the actual movie except for that shock/gasp factor ... other than that, a pretty good movie. Nice to see the "Pepsi" girl all grown up.
