How to Eat Fried Worms

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

I'm a total sucker for kids movies. Not those pop-culture-saturated, desperate-to-appeal-to-adults-and-teenagers kids movies like Shrek and The Incredibles; those can be great but they're not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about simple, honest, usually live-action movies with a moral and a heart. It takes me back.

Go ahead; call me a sap. But kids still have that uncanny sense of joy and fun we somehow lose when we're faced with the terror known as post-pubescent life. Consider, for example, How to Eat Fried Worms. (By the way, what's with all the awesome late-August movie titles?) Now that title just sounds funny. If that does not sound like it would be a humorous movie, it's time to face facts: you have no soul.

It turns out that Worms is actually based on a classic childrens book by Thomas Rockwell that I did, in fact, once read in my elementary years. I scarcely have any memories of it except for cursory visions of dead worms on a grill drowned in ketchup and mayonnaise. I'm happy to report that on that facet, the movie does not disappoint.

Let's backtrack a bit. Why would one want to learn how to eat fried worms? Well, meet Billy (Luke Benward). His family is moving to a new town and he's about to be the new kid. He also has an extraordinarily weak stomach -- on moving day, all it takes for him to throw up is seeing his little brother stuffing himself with food.

The first day of school, he's taunted by the resident bully (who, big surprise, has bright orange hair and lots of freckles). The bully, named Joe (Adam Hicks), finds a pile of worms and hides them in Billy's thermos. When everybody in the cafeteria notices and starts laughing, Billy, to save face, claims he eats worms all the time. And the next thing he knows, he's made a bet with Joe: he has to eat ten worms in a single day. Whoever loses has to go into school with worms in his underwear.

If this sounds like a fun movie to you, I can tell you you're right. (If it doesn't, go back to torturing puppies or whatever it is you like doing.) It's also extraordinarily family friendly and very positive. The boys will appreciate the gross-out factor of it (which is there but is able to walk the balance between humor and gag-inducing territory), and the girls aren't left out either, thanks to the role of Erika (Hallie Kate Eisenberg, who apparently still exists), an