Category: Children - Comedies - Family - Feature Film Family - Movie
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $27.98 Our Price: $19.99YOU SAVE $7.99!
Buy it
DVD How to Eat Fried Worms (New Line Platinum Series)
The popular 1973 kid's book How to Eat Fried Worms gets a respectful, straightforward translation with this 2006 movie. When bullies put worms in his thermos, Billy fights back--and only gets in deeper trouble when he makes a stomach-churning bet that he can eat ten worms. Using a variety of cooking schemes, the pack of bullies make a slimy meal even more repulsive, but Billy--to his own surprise--takes on everything they throw at him. As the disgustingness escalates, he discovers that not everyone is what they seem. Though many story elements are changed from the book, How to Eat Fried Worms treats the situation and characters with intelligence and integrity. There are a few cartoonish moments (including some inventive animated sequences), but overall the movie is down-to-earth and sincere, delivering some simple and unforced messages about courage and friendship along with the gross-out humor. The kids--including Luke Benward (Because of Winn-Dixie) as Billy and Hallie Kate Eisenberg (probably best known from a series of popular Pepsi ads) as a too-tall girl who shares Billy's outsider status--aren't overly slick, and the scenes between Billy and his father (Tom Cavanaugh, from the TV show Ed) feel honest and unpatronizing. A modest but heartfelt movie. --Bret Fetzer
Review(s): DVD How to Eat Fried Worms (New Line Platinum Series)
A Travesty
They have absolutely massacred a classic children's book to make this movie. The story has been turned on its head. In the book, young Billy and his friend making a bet that challenges their friendship. Over the course of 15 days - a worm a day - Billy and his friends come to learn a great deal about themselves and what is important in life. Billy is largely in control of his own destiny as he grapples with each day's preparation of said worm. The movie removes this friendship and instead sets up an overused and trite dynamic between Billy, now the new kid in school, and the class bully. The worms are all eaten in one day, prepared in a number of sadistic ways by the bully and his cronies. The adults are all buffoons, straight out of central casting. The life lessons are subsumed to a bunch of tired kid movie cliches, including bullies, gross out humor and stupid adults. This movie is worse than awful, as it destroys a timeless book.
Cooking With Dirt: Tasty!
Screenwriter-director Bob Dolman lets his cast be themselves, and that's what makes How to Eat Fried Worms delicious fun for adults and children. Authentic and energetic performances from the pre-teen stars make for captivating watching, as new kid Billy (Benward) gets wrangled into a bet to eat 10 worms in a day by local bully Joe (Hicks). What he doesn't know is Joe's gang is concocting horrible ways to cook those worms. Liver juice and blended broccoli top the ingredients.
Mixed in with this groovy gag-worthy plot hook are great strands of parents trying to help kids adjust to new situations, girls trying to be friends with gross boys, siblings learning to like each other, and the redemption of bullies who really aren't that bad. Benward does a great job of conveying the terror of a new school and trying to find new friends, while such enemies-turned-friend as the spastic Twitch, the dancing Adam Simms and the theatrical chef Benjy will have all ages in stiches. Helping these on-screen bursts of energy is a wacky score by Devo leader Mark Mothersbaugh.
Kids' movies that don't dumb down the pain of loneliness, bullying and growing up always deserve praise, and Dolman's concocted a winner out of the cute 1953 source material.
DVD Extras: The extras are all kid-friendly and get my adult-approved stamp. A chef shows how he cooks up "worms" for consumption by Benward (cheesecake taste helps). A blooper reel, deleted scenes and a promotional making-of featurette are cute and fast-paced. New Line's DVD-ROM-accessible DVD player lets curious fans search for moments of worm cooking and consumption as well as words in the script and then jump right to those moments in the film.
how to eat fried worms
I like the movie How To Eat Fried Worms. It is about a boy that ate worms. The characters are Joe, Chris, and Naylor. It takes place in the present. I like it because it is funny and it is cool and makes me laugh. My brother liked the movie and my mom because they laughed the entire time. I give the movie a thumbs up!
Related DVD's How to Eat Fried Worms (New Line Platinum Series)
When the farmer's back is turned, the animals party down in Barnyard. A young cow named Otis (voiced by Kevin James, The King of Queens) loves to have fun at the farm's wild late-night hoe-downs, despite the disapproval of his father, Ben (Sam Elliott, Thank You for Smoking). When Ben dies defending the barnyard from marauding coyotes, Otis is chosen as the new leader--but responsibility sits uneasily on Otis' head and he fears he may not be able to protect his friends from the coyotes. Barnyard's design of the cows seems inspired by Gary Larson's The Far Side comics; though the style is simple, the characters are surprisingly expressive. From moment to moment, the movie is reasonably entertaining. The actors--including Courteney Cox, Danny Glover, and... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 12 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $17.99YOU SAVE $12!
Buy it
An all-star cast--including such A-list stars as Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, and Meryl Streep--lend their voices to The Ant Bully. Social misfit Lucas gets bullied by the bigger boys in his neighborhood, so he takes out his frustrations on the only things around smaller than him: An ant hill on his front lawn. After being flooded and stepped on, the ants fight back when ant wizard Zoc (Cage, National Treasure) develops a potion that shrinks Lucas down to bug-size. But Zoc's thirst for revenge gets foiled when the beatific ant queen (Streep, The Devil Wears Prada) decrees that Lucas must learn to live like an ant, and Zoc's girlfriend Hova (Roberts, Runaway Bride) takes up the task of teaching the unhappy boy how to value others over himself. The animation of... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 28 November 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $28.98 Your Price: $19.99YOU SAVE $8.99!
Buy it
Take the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, add a dash of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a lot more rum. Shake well and you'll have something resembling Dead Man's Chest, a bombastic sequel that's enjoyable as long as you don't think too hard about it. The film opens with the interrupted wedding of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), both of whom are arrested for aiding in the escape of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in the first film. Their freedom can only be obtained by getting Captain Jack's compass, which is linked to a key that's linked to a chest belonging to Davy Jones, an undead pirate with a tentacle face and in possession of a lot of people's souls. If you're already confused, don't worry--plot is definitely not the... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 05 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $34.99 Your Price: $19.99YOU SAVE $15!
Buy it
This clever, funny big-screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's best-seller takes some of the snarky bite out of the chick lit book, but smoothes out the characters' boxy edges to make a more satisfying movie. There's no doubt The Devil Wears Prada belongs to Meryl Streep, who turns in an Oscar�-worthy (seriously!) strut as the monster editor-in-chief of Runway, an elite fashion magazine full of size-0, impossibly well-dressed plebes. This makes new second-assistant Andrea (Anne Hathaway), who's smart but an unacceptable size 6, stick out like a sore thumb. Streep has a ball sending her new slave on any whimsical errand, whether it's finding the... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Frankel DVD Release Date: Released the 12 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $16.98YOU SAVE $13.01!
Buy it
There's an extra coat of hot wax on Pixar's vibrant, NASCAR-influenced comedy about a world populated entirely by cars. Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is the slick rookie taking the Piston Cup series by storm when the last race of the season (the film's high-octane opening) ends in a three-way tie. On the way to the tie-breaker race in California, Lightning loses his way off Route 66 in the Southwest desert and is taught to stop and smell the roses by the forgotten citizens of Radiator Springs. It's odd to have such a slim story from the whizzes of Pixar, and the film pales a bit from their other films (though can that be a fair comparison?). Nonetheless, Cars is another gleaming ride with Pixar founder John Lasseter, who's directing for the first time since Toy Story... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 07 November 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $16.99YOU SAVE $13!
Buy it
This clever, funny big-screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's best-seller takes some of the snarky bite out of the chick lit book, but smoothes out the characters' boxy edges to make a more satisfying movie. There's no doubt The Devil Wears Prada belongs to Meryl Streep, who turns in an Oscar�-worthy (seriously!) strut as the monster editor-in-chief of Runway, an elite fashion magazine full of size-0, impossibly well-dressed plebes. This makes new second-assistant Andrea (Anne Hathaway), who's smart but an unacceptable size 6, stick out like a sore thumb. Streep has a ball sending her new slave on any whimsical errand, whether it's finding the...