Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (PG)
Disney Movies; Disney Wiki; IMDb; Jim Henson Company; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Disney+; Google Play; iTunes; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2014, but I didn't see it until 2022. It's loosely based on a 1972 children's book, which I haven't read.

On the day before his 12th birthday, Alexander Cooper has a very bad day. I won't go into the details of that, but he claims he always has bad days, while the rest of his family always has good days. That night at midnight, when he's officially 12, he makes himself a sundae with a candle, on which he wishes that his family would learn what it's like to have a bad day. And boy, do they. The next day totally lives up to the movie's title, for everyone except Alexander. His family includes his parents, Ben (Steve Carell) and Kelly (Jennifer Garner), his older brother Anthony, his older sister Emily, and his baby brother Trevor. I don't want to go into all the details of how the day goes wrong for them, either, because the fun of the movie is seeing all their troubles unfold. (It sounds like schadenfreude, but really I felt bad for them. It was still funny, though.) Part way through the day, Alexander confesses about the wish he made the night before, but no one believes he's responsible for their problems. (They're probably right, and everything that goes wrong is just a whole lot of coincidences. But it's a movie, so who knows? Maybe the wish did cause it.) But the movie does have a happy ending, and Alexander has a great birthday party.

I don't want to say more than that about the plot, but I do want to mention some of the other people who were in the movie. Bella Thorne plays Anthony's girlfriend, Celia. Megan Mullallly plays Kelly's boss, Nina. Donald Glover plays Greg, the boss at a job Ben interviews for. Jennifer Coolidge plays Anthony's terribly cruel driving instructor. Dick Van Dyke has a cameo as himself. Also, Alexander has a best friend named Paul and a crush named Becky. Anyway... it's not a great movie, but I found it reasonably fun.