Grade: B

Verdict: A good move.

Details: Starring Alex D. Linz and Larry Miller. Directed by Tim Hill. Rated PG for crude humor and mild junior high violence (bullying). One hour, 41 minutes.

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Review: Any movie that has the bad guy being chased by a petting zoo has my vote.

Actually, “Max Keeble's Big Move” gets a bunch of my votes. Once you get past the derivative “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” déjà-vu (scaled down, of course), you realize that, despite the derivative title, this is a different kind of movie. “Ferris Bueller” celebrated free-spirited anarchy, especially when it came to puffed-up principals and useless rules. “Max” goes through a phase like that, and it's good. But then the scriptwriters force their seventh-grade hero to deal with what he's done. As the school janitor says, “Any kid can make a mess, but it takes a man to clean one up.”

Max (Alex D. Linz) is a kid more used to being in a mess than making one. It's only his first day at junior high and already he's been humiliated by one school bully, shaken down for lunch money by another, snubbed by the ninth-grade beauty queen and targeted by the pompous, self-serving school principal (Larry Miller, doing some sharp comic shtick).

Then his dad announces the family is moving to Chicago. While Max isn't happy about leaving his best friends, Robe (Josh Peck) and Megan (Zena Grey), he also realizes that it's prime payback time. After all, he'll be in Chicago on Friday.

The movie gets off to an unpromising start that tries to mix broad slapstick (Max vs. the Evil Ice Cream Man) with some fairly sophisticated verbal humor that may go over some young heads.

But as Max decides to quit being a victim, the movie loosens up. He resorts to everything from psychological warfare to gallons of melted ice cream to torment his tormentors. Plus, there's a food fight John Belushi would admire.

Two things I could have done without: the generic teen soundtrack (like the ones you hear weekly on every Saturday morning TV show) and Max's over-moussed hair. Otherwise, this is an entertaining and often quite amusing kid flick, with good acting and a good message. At the screening last weekend, Chloe, age 8, thought it was “very funny” and that younger kids would like it, too. Her opinion was confirmed by 6-year-old Holly who, after some careful thought, deemed it “just fine” for her pals. And her dad, who's older than Chloe and Holly put together (I'm just guessing) liked it, too.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service