Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

You gotta hand it to these "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movies. They've managed to get four feature-length films out of the popular series of books by Jeff Kinney.

None of the movies has been particularly great, but to the crowd for which they're intended, they're pleasantly diverting and mostly inoffensive, if not at times annoying.

"The Long Haul," the latest of the films about the exploits of the Heffley family, particularly Greg (Jason Drucker), the titular Wimpy Kid, doesn't do much to change the game, but if you're looking for wholesome family entertainment, I suppose it's not all that bad.

Seven years after the first film, "Long Haul" is entirely recast, with new child actors playing the leads, and Alicia Silverstone and Tom Everett Scott ("La La Land") playing taking over as clueless parents of Greg, Rodrick (Charlie Wright), and Manny (twins Dylan and Wyatt Walters).

Moving away from the formula of home and school life, the Heffley family hits the open road on a quest to get to Meemaw's house in Indiana for her 90th birthday. Greg, however, has something else in mind: He wants to stop in Indianapolis, where his favorite YouTuber (Joshua Hoover) will appear.

The rest of the film is essentially a more family-friendly retelling of "Vacation," where everything that can go wrong does, mostly told in the set-'em-up, knock-'em-down method of joke-telling. You know the motel they're staying at will be roach-infested and too small as they drive up, and that at some point the car will break down, and that showing drivers on the road a sign that says "Help! We're being kidnapped" will draw the attention of the police.

There are some mildly amusing bits here, including an ongoing bit about Greg becoming an Internet meme after a dirty diaper becomes stuck to his hand. But most of are your usual run-of-the-mill, well-worn chestnuts that include the recurrence of a rival family whose vacation is affected by the Heffleys' shenanigans and the family (including, of course, dad) trying to skirt mom's rule about no electronic devices on the trip. (As a parent who just went on a long trip with his kids, let me just say this policy is absolute madness.).

Films like these are easy to bash because, frankly, they are the type of films that kids love and parents love to hate. There's an old-fashioned sensibility about these films, even as they lob the next fart or poop joke at us. And that's OK, even if as parents we see these as a waste of our time.

They can serve as a reminder of how innocent we used to be before adulthood made us old and cynical. And while we (hopefully) aren't going to spend time watching and re-watching as our kids might, the mere fact that these films exist are a testament to the popularity of the original work, and they serve as the increasingly rare moving picture that also becomes an advertisement to encourage reading among young kids, which I think we can all agree most films do not even attempt.