Film Reviews

Horrid Henry

• Rating:
• Director: Nick Moore
• Starring: Anjelica Huston
• Details: UK / 93mins (G).

Adapted from Francesca Simon's books, Horrid Henry is the first, and hopefully the last, outing of the pre-teen tearaway. Imagine being at a children's party where the kids have smuggled in Smarties and play a game that whoever is the loudest can kick you in the shins while squirting you with a water gun full of eggs. That's what it's like watching Horrid Henry.
When he's not at school, Henry (Stevenson) likes nothing better than invading the tree house of the girl next door and stealing her chocolate goodies. When he is at school, he delights in ruining his teacher's, Miss Battleaxe (Huston), day. However, when the nasty Vic Van Wrinkle (Grant) sets about forcing the closures of the schools in the district so the students will have to enrol in his posh (and expensive) Brickhouse school, Henry must band together his mates and raise the necessary cash to keep his school open.
Well, this is annoying. Like a hyperactive kid who won't sit still at the dinner table, preferring to fire peas and mash at all those seated around, Horrid Henry has an irritating energy to it. Jumping here, there and everywhere, the story is a series of sequences that crash into each other, create an unholy mess and God-awful racket, and leave you wrecked in its wake. And it's made me sound like a grouchy parent – another reason to hate this movie.
Director Nick Moore (Wild Child) gets into the mind of a kid like this and directs accordingly: the visuals come thick and fast, as Henry's imagination impinges on reality (he imagines himself as a dinosaur and such); the sound effects mirror the visuals as burps, farts and boings penetrate the eardrums on a regular basis. The movie is all over the shop, which could have so easily being crazy fun… but it's just crazy infuriating.
Stevenson is game for a laugh, full of bustling energy, but Henry himself isn't a nice character. Boys will be boys and all that, but in between firing snots and water balloons at all and sundry and getting up to the usual hijinks boys get up to, he just isn't a boy you'd like to hang out with if you are at that age. The kids around him aren't much better: his brother, Perfect Peter (Ross Marron), is too much of a Goody-Goody Two Shoes to root for, while the girl next door (there are too many characters to remember so let's just call her Annoying Anna) is very annoying. Grant turns up for the cheque but Huston has fun as Battleaxe but the only one who walks away with any dignity is Nagra, who keeps her head down throughout.

Review by Gavin Burke