The hugely successful author and screenwriter brings his and his team’s personal experience – and plenty of real stories – to the new 3DCG film about Greg Hefley dealing with his father Frank’s outsized expectations; based on his novels that follow a disaster-prone middle school student, it’s now streaming on Disney+.
Two years ago, Disney and 20th Century Animation released a hilariously horrifying Christmas film, , where main character Greg Heffley goes up against one of the eeriest elves ever be found on a shelf.The studios’ latest film in the famed franchise, based on Jeff Kinney’s bestselling children's book series, is very different.
isn’t all mayhem and comedy, though there is still plenty of that.But it’s primarily a sincere father-son story."We're exploring the dynamic between Greg and his father and parents and children in general,” shares Kinney, who first began publishing his “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series in 2004.
“We like turning these movies out at Christmas because we know that families are going to sit there in front of the TV and experience these types of stories together.I'm really hoping that people can see themselves in Greg and his family members and maybe learn a thing or two.” Now streaming on Disney+, finds Greg at odds with his dad’s outsized expectations and the pressure builds to turn his act around.After a series of hilarious near disasters, Greg’s dad, who has always wanted Greg to do sports and “become a man” who is self-sufficient, presents him with an ultimatum that just might challenge Greg’s wimpy ways for good.
Directed by Matt Danner () and written and produced by Kinney, features the voices of Aaron D.Harris () as Greg Heffley and Chris Diamantopoulos () as his father Frank Heffley.Check out the trailer: Kinney says the film is based on both experiences with his own father and his experience being a father himself.
“The opening scene is taken right out of my own life as a parent, where Greg doesn't know how to use a key,” says Kinney.“This happened to me, where one of my sons didn't know how to operate a key or to open the door.After that, I was like, ‘What else haven't I taught my son? Does he know how to turn on a stove or light a match? I have no idea!’ That was the spark that started this story off and is at the emotional core of the story.” Plenty of parents today were kids when “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” first released in bookstores.
And many may have a different viewpoint compared to kids or teenagers who read them for the first time today.While Frank’s insistence on turning Greg into the man he wants his son to be might seem oppressive and stifling to younger audiences, parents can understand that Frank isn’t simply trying to control Greg’s life.In his own way, Frank is ensuring Greg’s survival in a world he knows to be harsh and unforgiving.
“Working on these scripts is very therapeutic because I and about three other people all get on the phone and we talk about our own parenting stories,” says Kinney.“We laugh about our own failures, and we laugh about our kids and how challenging they can be.And then those stories make it right into the film.
It's a real privilege to work with people you really love to work with and to make something that feels good and feels like it's additive to the world.These stories come from a real place.” Keeping the stories authentic to the parenting experience was not a challenge in production.But figuring out how to balance the heart with humor was another story.
“That’s always key, balancing the humor and emotion,” says Kinney.“If it's not funny, you don't have a [] story that's worth watching.But it also has to really resonate, and we only have like an hour and ten minutes to make a point.
These movies are really tight, and you have to be really disciplined.There's really no waste in these movies.It’s a fun challenge to try to tell a complete story in that time frame.” The trick, in Kinney’s opinion, is pairing a good script with a good performance.
In the film adaptations, the voice actors make a difference and sometimes can say more with their tones and deliveries than just what words on a page could convey.“Chris Diamantopoulos brings a lot to Frank’s character because he’s got a lot of range,” notes Kinney.“In the earlier movies, his character was a little bit more comic, and in this movie he's more relatable.
He goes a little bit deeper.” He adds, “It's really hard to replicate a human being in a comic, but I think there is something really elegant about when you pair a really great voice performance with an animation.It makes you believe in that character, just like they're a human being.I definitely feel the feelings that the characters are feeling.
So, I think a lot of parents will be able to see themselves in Frank and they'll relate to his struggles.” And those struggles can range from not knowing how to use a key or having a lack of wilderness skills to destroying an entire lawn and its Christmas decorations.“It was really fun storyboarding that lawnmower scene,” says Kinney.“I think we went a little over the top on that, but we wanted to keep escalating it.
And it was fun to make all the destruction into something that was coherent, where one thing leads to another.I remember that the decapitated reindeer was definitely a topic of discussion and I was surprised to find that it made it into the film.But I think it's one of my favorite scenes.” Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.
She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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