917. Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)

Starring: Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner, Ed Oxenbould

Director: Miguel Arteta

Running Time: 81 mins

Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is an American film about a young boy, fed up of living through terrible days while his family get everything they want, accidentally curses one day after making a birthday wish for the whole family, causing absolute chaos.

Well, this is a generic Disney family comedy that doesn’t really make you laugh out loud all that much, whilst it is also, at times, painfully cheesy to watch. However, it’s somehow not too frustrating or annoying enough to make this an unpleasant viewing experience, leaving it as a simply relatively entertaining one, but still nothing too brilliant.

With a story as potentially irritating as this, it’s a huge surprise that this film isn’t teeth-grindingly irritating. That comes because of two main reasons. Firstly, because everything that goes wrong is so ridiculously preposterous, and means you don’t really have to get too frustrated by it (although that hyperbole does mean you lose interest).

Secondly, there are some pretty decent performances by the main actors here. Steve Carell, despite being in a much more watered-down role than normal, is a lot of fun to watch, as is Jennifer Garner, although to a lesser extent, and although the younger actors don’t shine too much, they do do well in avoiding being the generically irritating Disney kids that people really love to hate.

On the other hand, there’s nothing massively commendable in this film as a whole. For a comedy, it’s pretty high on the jokes, but relatively low on the laughter count, and although it is pretty short at only 81 minutes long, it’s still occasionally a little dull and dragging due to the lack of top-quality humour.

As well as that, the cheese is occasionally incredibly irritating. Luckily, the story isn’t so annoying, but the schmaltz that does come about, particularly towards the end of the film, takes away a bit from the very neutral atmosphere of simple, family-friendly jokes that aren’t too annoying, which was a bit of a shame.

Overall, this gets a 6.7, because despite not being the most frustrating Disney movie you’ll ever see, it’s just not a particularly funny or interesting one to sit through.