"Boys are so weird." This is the summary judgment of Erika (Hallie Kate Eisenberg), while doing her best to support her recently added classmate Billy (Luke Benward). It's also the clever point and anti-point of "How to Eat Fried Worms", in which Billy's mighty efforts to fit in with his new environment, to seem like "a normal person," also make him decidedly not normal. For, as Erika puts it, "Normal people don't eat worms."
Billy arrives at his first day of fifth grade feeling apprehensive, for he knows that being the new kid is the "worst thing in the world." Although his mom (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) does her best to assuage his nervousness, all Billy can feel is alone, especially when renowned bully Joe (Adam Hicks) takes him as an easy target. Billy turns this dynamic around almost by accident, reacting without considering consequences when faced with a crisis.
In the cafeteria, he finds his thermos filled with worms -- a prank engineered by Joe -- and instead of puking (which he is prone to do, as revealed in an opening credits animated sequence, wherein his cartoon self throws up at the slightest provocation, say, watching the dryer spin and his baby brother drool), he is somehow able to maintain his cool. Indeed, Billy finds it in himself to pick up a worm and toss it at Joe. When it lands on the bully's face, he screams, soliciting laughter from everyone in the room.
Well, that tears it. Now Joe must get even, and so he and his minions -- including spiky-headed Twitch (Alexander Gould), the braces-afflicted Techno Mouth (Andrew Gillingham), and Donny (Alexander Agate), the brain -- chase after Billy on their bikes until they catch him on a dirt road. The menace is palpable. Billy's survival depends on a smart combination of capitulation and challenge -- when Joey makes him a bet that he can't eat 10 worms in one day without throwing up, Billy can't say no. Suddenly, Saturday looms like doomsday.
Based on Thomas Rockwell's 33-year-old children's book, the movie is visually pedestrian but full of awesomely cute kids, geeks, and meanies alike. Even Billy's dad (Tom Cavanagh) is pretty cute, his mouth turned up in a kind of perpetually tentative smile, advising his son on how to be the new kid even as he is also the new guy at work. "Take the initiative," he tells Billy, go on up and shake hands.
Billy sighs, understanding there is a limit to dad's wisdom after all: "Kids don't shake hands." Alas, dad is undergoing his own initiation -- a colleague invites him and his wife to play tennis on the same Saturday Billy's eating worms -- and so he's a bit distracted ("It was the way he asked me. He was testing me").
This means that Billy, now known as "Worm Boy" at school, is on his own for Saturday. Worse, he has to take care of his little brother Woody (Ty Panitz) even while eating the worms. Luckily, he gets some help on this front from Erika, who's rooting for Billy because she's tired of being bullied too (Joe and his boys call her "Irk" and tease her about being too tall). Woody, for his part, is the sort of naturally affable child who makes friends and impresses adults wherever he goes, though Billy sees him acting out his own bully scenarios against helpless creatures, drooling on ants and whacking the birdfeeder until it breaks.
The first worm downed is something of an ordeal, owing to the fact that that Official Worm Cooker Benjy (Ryan Malgarini) fries it up in lard on a park barbeque and Billy has to eat it on the run when the cops roll up to announce, "No barbequing!" But soon he's winning sympathizers from among Joe's "team," as he seems to be willing himself to succeed. "Worm Boy stopped himself with mental power," observes one admirer. "He told the vomit to stay inside."
Billy's new buddies include Adam (Austin Rogers), lately a victim of Joe's Death Ring (when he punches you with it, you're infected with a poison that makes you bleed internally and slowly, so you're dead by eighth grade). Fed up at last with trying to win Joe's never-coming approval, Adam chooses to be on Billy's team.
While the lessons about fitting in, being loyal, and finding common ground when it seems unlikely are all good, the film's primary focus is the mashing, cooking, and chewing of worms. Benjy goes so far as to show up with a blender, in which he combines spinach, broccoli, and green worms, and gives each concoction a name. The Barfmallow mixes worms with ketchup and marshmallow; the Burning Fireball, hot sauce, tomato sauce, and high heat; and the Radioactive Slime Delight is almost elegant, a solo worm going splat inside a microwave, requiring a spatula to get it to Billy's mouth. The more he's able to keep the worms ingested, the more self-confident Billy becomes, to the point that he starts to believe his own hype.
For its primarily 10-year-old audience, "How to Eat Fried Worms" maintains an appropriate focus, without making gestures toward adult viewers. The upchuck potential increases with every next recipe, even as the two opposing teams of boys begin to bond -- in spite of themselves.
Occasionally accommodating the principal (James Rebhorn), a scary bait-shop lady (Jo Ann Farabee), and a well meaning teacher (Andrea Martin), for the most part, these boys are all on their own, including Joe, whose meanness has a visible source, his bully of a big brother Nigel (Nick Krause). As they learn lessons adults can't teach, they remain suitably "weird." The film rates as a 5 out of 10.
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