Review: Flipped

Updated: Friday, February 10 2012, 02:31 PM CST

Grade: B

Flipped is a coming of age story that anyone of any age will relate to. There's nothing like your first discovery of love. Director Rob Reiner captures this very well. With the same strength he had with Stand by Me, this heartfelt comedy is set in the late 50's into the early 60's. Based on the novel by the same name by Wendelin Van Draanen, Rob Reiner writes this with Andrew Scheinman in a more innocent time than the novel's present day.

In the comedy Flipped, Juli Baker (played by Madeline Carroll) takes a liking to Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe) in second grade and always imagined the day that she would kiss him. Even though the feeling isn't mutual, Bryce can't get away because she lives right across the street. Bryce thinks Juli is very strange. She spends a lot of time with her family and tends to chickens right in her backyard when she doesn't even live on a farm. She spends a lot of time in a SYCAMORE tree because it gives her a different perspective of the world. Bryce doesn't have the family problems Juli has so it's hard for him to relate. With a mentally disabled uncle that her family pays a lot for his facility, Julie and her parents don't have the money for nicer things.

As Juli gets older, she sees Bryce as someone who is superficial, but the tables start to turn as he begins to flip out for her.

This is a great family movie. It is narrated either by Juli or Bryce so you can see things through their opposite points of view. The story is slow at times, but with an all-star cast including John Mahoney as Bryce's grandfather, it is one of Rob Reiner's best. This movie is as great as a whole as is the sum of its parts.

Click here for trailer

Ken The Critic's Movie Review Grading Scale

A ) Superb and solid; a movie that will be etched in your mind 10 years from now

B  ) Good movie, so good in fact that you would want to see it again before it's out of the theaters; the story may drag in places

C  ) Average, entertaining at parts; you might want to wait and rent it

D  ) Lacks a lot from entertainment, plot, realism, development, etc.

F  ) Terrible and you will want to walk out of the movie; no redemptive qualities whatsoeverReview: Flipped