A diminutive youngster tries to survive bullies and social ostracization during his first year of middle school in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” an above-average and sometimes surprising kid movie based on the first of a popular series of cartoon books by Jeff Kinney.
The opening scenes at home are no more promising than director Thor Freudenthal’s “Hotel for Dogs.” But things improve when the sardonic narrator, Greg (Zachary Gordon, who resembles a pint-size Paul Rudd), arrives at school, where he’s immediately labeled a social outcast.
Determined to be a big man on campus, Greg joins the safety patrol. Not only is this decidedly uncool, but our hero discovers that a bigger liability may be his large, makeup-loving friend Rowley (Robert Capron).
From an adult’s point of view, the most interesting thing about this movie may be its preteen homo-eroticism. Besides a lengthy wrestling sequence, there’s a positively “La Cage aux Folles” moment when Greg tries to butch up Rowley by spray-painting his pink bicycle black and banishing his bud’s “I Love Mom” T-shirt.
Greg eventually betrays Rowley altogether, but is driven to jealousy when the increasingly popular Rowley begins sleepovers with a positively metrosexual new friend.
Unusually accepting of alternative lifestyles for a mainstream Hollywood product, the film climaxes with a production of “The Wizard of Oz” in which a teacher offers a mortified Greg the role of Dorothy because of his lovely soprano.
A nasty girl eventually plays Dorothy, but “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” doesn’t wimp out in suggesting that, when it comes to pre-adolescent male bonding, boys will be boys in all sorts of ways.