PLOT: A new kid in school gets taunted incessantly by the school bully and his cronies before fighting back by taking on a challenge to eat worms. Taken from a popular kids novel

Two decades ago, a Canadian children's sketch comedy series called You Can't Do That On Television became a huge hit in the U.S. entirely on the selling power of slime.

Every skit in this show (which among other things launched the career of a young Alanis Morisette) seemed to involve something foul or gross being smeared or dropped on some poor unfortunate.

Memories are short in Hollywood, it seems, because the slime ball was dropped after YCDTOT and ooze as a leitmotif has been largely unexplored in kidflicks of late.

Enter How To Eat Fried Worms, a better-than-average children's movie based however loosely on a popular novel by Thomas Rockwell. It's a movie skewed towards boys that stands entirely on the grossness of worms, particularly worms that are cooked in lard, coated in the unspeakable, mixed in omelettes and blown up in the microwave.

Once hooked by the worms, however, the viewer young and old is given a bonus, a portrayal of primary school life that is neither patronizing nor false -- a point-of-view portrait of the hallway paranoia and random persecution that comes with being a new kid.

Billy (Luke Benward) is a self-conscious new kid in town, saddled with a precocious little brother whose every noisy utterance or impromptu performance elicits delightful squeals from the grownups. His real problem, however, is the iron curtain that arbitrarily springs up between him and the other kids in class -- the kids taking their cue from class bully Joe (Adam Hicks). When Joe sneaks worms into Billy's lunch, and Billy returns the dis by tossing a worm in Joe's face, a spiral of torment begins, swirling around Billy's horrifying new nickname "Wormboy."

Backed into a corner, Billy defiantly accepts a challenge to prove his coolness by eating worms without barfing. All the while, Billy's one real friend, the gawky Erika (Hallie Eisenberg, the precocious kid from those Pepsi ads a decade ago, all grown up) surveys the testosterone dance and ponders the stupidity of boys.

Tom Cavanagh (Ed) does what he can on the sidelines, with an adult "new kid in the office" subplot meant to convey how things never really change. Amusing as it is, it's extraneous. Kudos, though, to director (and ex-SCTV writer) Bob Dolman, who gives the kids real personalities with their stereotypical nicknames (Twitch, Plug, Techno Mouth).

BOTTOM LINE: Two yucky thumbs up for a kidflick that rings true. Slime as a motif for children's entertainment hasn't been this effective since the Canadian '80s hit You Can't Do That On Television. The ooze provides surefire entertainment, wrapped around an uncanny portrait of the paranoia and random persecution that comes with being a new kid.

(This film is rated G)
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