Max Keebles Big Move

Plot

Seventh grader Max Keeble (Alex D. Linz) is a paperboy who has a huge crush on Jenna (Brooke Anne Smith), the daughter of one of his paper recipients. Max is antagonized by the corrupt megalomaniacal school principal, Elliot T. Jindrake (Larry Miller), resident bullies Troy McGinty and Dobbs (Noel Fisher and Orlando Brown), and the Evil Ice Cream Man (Jamie Kennedy). Max also learns that an animal shelter he visits is being closed down to build Jindrake's opulent football stadium.

When Max's father, Donald (Robert Carradine), reveals that he is moving to Chicago for his boss, because he is unable to stand up for himself, Max realizes that he can do whatever he wants to Jindrake, Troy, Dobbs, and the Evil Ice Cream Man, facing no consequences because he will be gone by then. Enlisting his equally socially outcast friends, Robe and Megan (Josh Peck and Zena Grey), pranks include traumatizing Troy by playing the main theme song of the fictional children's television show, MacGoogle the Highlander Frog, which frightened him as a child, trapping him in the gym with a MacGoogle suit wearer, instigating a fight between Dobbs and the Evil Ice Cream Man by stealing the coolant coil for the ice cream truck and Dobbs's handheld device, and ruining Jindrake's chances of becoming superintendent to replace the current superintendent, Crazy Legs (Clifton Davis), by planting animal pheromones within his breath spray, instigating a food fight in the cafeteria, and later by sabotaging his announcements by placing a cardboard cutout of Max pointing at him claiming that he was wearing a thong.

After his missions are completed, Max ends up ditching Robe and Megan's going away party by accepting an invitation to Jenna's milkshake party, causing a falling out. Taking Max's earlier advice to heart, Don announces that he quit his job and started his own business, meaning that Max is not moving after all. Max freaks out at this news, and learns that other students at his school are suffering because of his actions. Max states that no matter who you are, you can always stand up for yourself. Max confronts Jindrake, Troy, and Dobbs one final time, and with the help of other students at his school, Max eventually defeats Troy and Dobbs for good by throwing them into the dumpster and stops Jindrake from demolishing the animal shelter, which later gets him fired for fiddling with the school budget to build his stadium (due to Max tricking Jindrake into publicly admitting to fiddling with the school budget earlier). The film ends when Max rides on his bicycle delivering newspapers around his neighborhood, and the Evil Ice Cream Man starts pursuing him once again.

Cast

Box office

Max Keeble's Big Move grossed $17.3 million in the United States and Canada and $1.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $18.6 million, against a production budget of $25 million.

The film grossed $5.4 million in its opening weekend, finishing 7th at the box office.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 29% based on 56 reviews, and an average rating of 5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Max Keeble may be fun for kids, but bland and unoriginal for adults." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score 40 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.