Review of Fun Size (2012) by Ava P — 06 Mar 2013

I can just imagine it now: the execs at Paramount sadly watching all of the movies aimed for teenagers flopping, one after the other. Aside from Twilight or "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," the teen genre is one that films should mostly stay the hell away from unless they are of a "Superbad" or the aforementioned "Wallflower" quality. Instead of putting a little more effort into the next attempt, Paramount clearly decided to simply go the complete other direction and take a kid's movie as close to an "R" rating as possible. And make a Nickelodeon movie to boot.

And they got pretty damn close to getting it right. To the movie's unending credit, the main cast are actually a bit too good for this sort of thing. Victoria Justice is actually much better than I could have ever expected. Despite being several years older than an actual teenager, she actually does hit the mannerisms of a teenage girl perfectly. Even as piss-poor as the script is, which I'll get to, she still redeems herself. Jane Levy, playing the supporting role of "bitchy best friend," is supremely annoying, but in a surprisingly bearable way. For whatever reason, Johnny Knoxville's in this movie too.

Apart from them and the two male romantic leads played by Thomas Mann of "Project X" and an Asian guy whose name I don't know, the rest of the film's cast is complete ass. There's a stereotypical bad-boy rock star type, but he's given nothing to do other than understandably pine for Justice. Chelsea Handler plays the slutty mom of Justice's character, and should've won a Razzie.

Much like most movies for teenagers, it completely screws up when it comes to how teenagers talk and interact. Jane Levy's character is given most of the crappy dialogue, unfortunately. The plot is also obvious from the beginning, and I literally predicted every plot point almost exactly the way it happened.

So yeah, this is decidedly average. Justice has potential, and if she gets lucky, she may even be an actual movie star someday.