As a child, I found two of Booth Tarkington's books, "Penrod" and its sequel "Penrod and Sam", to be the funniest I had read. Those two eleven year old boys and their dog, around 1900 AD, were getting into the most hilarious of mischievous scrapes. UNFORTUNATELY, the writers for this film focused primarily on those episodes where Penrod and Sam were getting their revenge on Georgie Bassett, a "goodie-goodie", so it treats the bullying of Georgie as funny and as a positive. "Bullying" is in the spotlight today with a special focus on how destructive it can be - even leading to suicide by the victims - those episodes, which composed the bulk of the film,did not seem very funny. I found it most disappointing. To be fair, the child actors were great and the director got the right flavor for the non-bullying incidents so had the movie been primarily on those types of scrapes, I would have rated this movie at the top of the scale rather than at the bottom.