The movie Fun Size presumably gets its name from the shirt that one of the main characters wears for a brief minute near the end of the film, which says "I'm not short - I'm fun sized." However, this film was anything BUT fun, and is in fact one of the worst movies I've seen in quite a while - despite the comedic intentions, it isn't funny at all.
Wren (Victoria Justice) and her friend April (Jane Levy) are thrilled when they receive a Halloween party invite from a hot guy at their high school, Aaron Riley (Thomas McDonell). There's only one problem: Wren's mom, Joy (Chelsea Handler), is going out to a party with her 26-year-old boyfriend, Keevin (Josh Pence), and needs Wren to babysit her younger brother Albert (Jackson Nicoll) that night. Wren and April take Albert trick-or-treating, and while in a haunted house they manage to lose track of him. They scour the town looking for Albert, and wheedle school dorks Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) and Peng (Osric Chau) into driving them around so that they can find them. What they don't know is that Albert is off on an adventure of his own, where he meets gas store clerk Fuzzy (Thomas Middleditch) and some new friends and ends up attending a Halloween party of his own.
First off, this movie has already been done, minus the Halloween theme, only it was called Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008), in which Nick and Norah were searching for their friend whom they lost in New York City; that film was far, far better than Fun Size ever dares to be. You know a comedy is awful when the funniest scene in it has to do with a cat's reaction to something. The acting in the movie was decent overall, but the actors were hampered by a horrible script.
I like Jane Levy a lot on the TV show Suburgatory, too, but her character comes off as a bitchy jerk in this film; she doesn't care that Wren's brother is missing, and even though she lures Wren to Aaron's party with the promise that Albert is there, Wren is still friends with her at the end of the film, which in real life probably wouldn't happen.
No, don't see this movie. Although the film did have a concrete beginning, middle, and end, by its end it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a comedy, a movie about loss (the main character's dad died in 2011), or a happy-go-lucky Halloween film. I'm also a little sad that this is the directorial debut of Josh Schwartz, who writes and executive produces TV's Gossip Girl, because that show usually is good, whereas this movie was a train wreck. I'm hoping that the actors did this film for the paycheck, and knew that the script was horrific; if they didn't, then perhaps they accepted their roles without reading the script first. There's got to be some explanation, anyway, for the creation of this wholly unfunny and inappropriately-produced-by-Nickelodeon film.
Fun Size is in theaters today, October 26th, and is rated PG-13 with a runtime of approximately 80 minutes. 1.5 stars out of 5.
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Liz Parker is a University of Michigan graduate with a degree in Creative Writing and Literature, and she loves going to the movies. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films