Max Keeble starts his first day of middle school and joins his friends, Megan and Robert.

However, the principal is a tyrant and wants to ruin things for everyone and cut budgets on important aspects of the school. A major one is to remove the local animal shelter, and build a football stadium in its place.

And if that’s not bad enough, the bullies, Troy and Dobbes, and the evil ice cream man want to ruin Max’s life, as well.

Max’s parents tell him that they will move to Chicago at some point, because his dad can’t keep his job due to struggling to stand up for himself, according to his box. So, Max thinks he can cause trouble and get away with it.

This film reminded me a lot like the Nickelodeon show, “Ned’s Declassified: School Survival Guide,” except in film format. A lot of its moments stood out to me.

One of the silliest scenes is when Max dresses in a leftover costume of MacGoogles, a frog from a little kid’s show and plays the theme song inside of the outfit, to humiliate the bully, Troy. He also plays the same song every time Troy opened his locker.

While on this topic, the movie shows a flashback from Max’s 4th birthday party, where Max cries due to his fear of MacGoogles (a person in a costume, of course) coming. However, his guests taunt him and call him a scaredy cat.

There are some flaws with that. First of all, “scaredy cat” is a pretty mature word for 4-year-olds. I don’t think it would enter a child’s vocabulary until, at least, age 7 or 8. They would have called Max a baby.

Also, if the other kids make fun of him, are they really his friends? Shouldn’t the parents have yelled at them and forced them to apologize to Max?

In real life, that would have occurred. Not only that, every parent would have also said that he or she was sorry about his or her children’s behavior. Max’s mom and dad would likely never invite any of those kids to his parties again.

Another issue includes the evil ice cream truck driver, who attacks Max with ice cream. Why doesn’t he get in trouble and fired for that? Hopefully it happened some time after the film ended.

That being said, Max makes a good point that getting back at bullies makes him a bully himself. Yet, some of the staff also didn’t act friendly or professional.

The principal is a complete “cartoon character” with all bad in him. By cartoon character, I mean that he lacks credability – not just for a man his age – but also for a real person in general. The same goes for the ice cream truck man.

But what did find sweet is when Max goes to the animal shelter and reunites with the chimpanzee he used to own. The chimp shows some sympathy, too.

For some reason, though, the animal shelter resembles a farm with goats, llamas, and other creatures you wouldn’t usually find there.

Overall, the film ended up being too silly and unbelievable. Yes, it’s a movie, but still – there is some work that can be done to the movie better. A good number of elements displeased me, as well.

Despite that, the morals taught were still good to learn and some of the moments did amuse me. But I rate “Max Keeble’s Big Move” 3.5 out of 5 stars.