Chaotic mishmash

Horrid Henry (3D, like we care) is the first big-screen adaptation of Francesca Simon’s bestselling children’s books, and if you would like to save yourself a trip to the cinema you can recreate the experience at home by tuning into some super-noisy, busy, brightly coloured Saturday-morning kids’ TV programme while simultaneously bashing your head between a pair of cymbals and wishing you were dead.

This film is an agony from beginning to end. The plot is a chaotic mishmash of several others via a number of nonsensical detours, plus all the characters, without exception, are appallingly drawn. There is not a scintilla of truth in any of them. Not a sniff. You may say an adult would think this, but I attended the screening along with my two nephews — Fred, nine, and Harry, 12 — and they both declared it abysmal before, of course, they strongarmed me into Nando’s where, as it happens, we fast became engaged in a lively discussion about the issues of the day.