“Would I ever do something rash and dangerous… if it wasn’t also awesome and dangerous?”

Justin’s rating: Time to put on your cinematic swimmies and dive into this one

Justin’s review: As a voracious reader in my youth, I gravitated strongly to books with impish youth protagonists who were always pulling pranks, forming plans, and saving the day. Out of the many series I read, one of my top favorites was Gordon Korman’s Bruno & Boots, which detailed the comedic exploits of two troublemakers at a boarding school in Canada. In fact, I remember reading 1979’s “Go Jump in the Pool” repeatedly the month that I got kicked out of my bedroom at home while it was being renovated.

So there was a jolt of recognition when I saw that not only did they actually make a Bruno & Boots movie (three of them, in fact), but that the very first one was modeled after the same book that cemented itself as a critical part of my childhood.

Bruno Walton (Jonny Gray) and Melvin “Boots” O’Neal (Callan Potter) are the chief rabble-rousers at Macdonald Hall, an all-boys prep school where they lead their cadre of loyal friends in all sorts of goofs, especially on the stuck-up headmaster who everyone calls “The Fish” (Peter Keleghan). They’re also good friends with their female contemporaries across the street, Cathy (Hannah Vandenbygaart) and Diane (Kiana Madeira), who are usually up for anything prank-related.

But what both the books and the film emphasize is that Bruno and Boots don’t hate their school — in fact, they deeply love and are loyal to it. So when Macdonald Hall finds itself under threat of losing funding and kids to the better-funded and more athletic York Academy, the boys whip up their most ambitious plan yet to save the day. And they’ll need to make sure it succeeds, because even Boots is in danger of being relocated to the more high profile school.

It is, as Bruno says, “the darkest hour of Macdonald Hall history.” So the idea is formed that if Macdonald Hall somehow can fund its own pool, then the school will be seen as more athletic and Boots’ family will want him to stay. But that’s going to require a $150,000 check, which kind of seems on the low side for a brand-new Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Cue unauthorized rummage sales, midnight thefts, car washes, kissing booths, toll roads, fan sites, and surprise cooking competitions. And, because Bruno and Boots are heading most of them up, chaos travels alongside all of it.

Despite the books being written in the ’70s and ’80s, the subject matter translates surprisingly well to the 2010s. It’s kind of like a weirdly wholesome National Lampoon school hijinks flick coupled with some Ferris Bueller vibes. Yes, sometimes the characters overact a little too much, but by and large, it’s a genuinely funny “kids rule” kind of flick with a whole lot of energy and wit.

It’s far funnier than I was expecting, and a lot of that comes down to a solid core cast. Bruno is brimming with the sort of manic confidence that I used to admire, Cathy gleefully leads the girls in “independent learning” exercises, and The Fish strikes a masterful balance between being the authority who the kids must thwart but also rely upon. I genuinely like that the headmaster ends up working with the boys for the project as a way to channel their passion into something more constructive.

Sure, Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool is a little Disney movie of the week, but so what? It’s the ideal tone for goofy kids doing goofy things that — for once — isn’t all about unrequited romances, dance competitions, and making acapella regionals. I think it captures a lot of the fun of the book and does my childhood memory proud.

Intermission!

• I dig the high-energy character intros (with name cards!)
• “He once ate a worm, but he doesn’t know that.”
• When someone puts the word “welcome” in quotes like that, they probably don’t mean it
• “Remember the most important thing: Swim… really fast.”
• “What good does your math do if it just subtracts hope?”
• Any shenanigans require fake moustaches
• That’s a lot of fake CGI pool foam
• “Losing is kind of a tradition at Macdonald Hall. Some of our top swimmers have gone on to lose at the Olympics.”
• “Prank is shorter.”
• Hall Monitors get segways
• The Green Wiener Incident
• “Since you boys have come to Macdonald Hall, you’ve expended not an inconsiderable amount of energy on things that explode, fizz, rumble, shatter, squish…” “Squish?” “Operation Pudding Pants.” “Oh.”
• Bruno signing autographs on campus
• “I’m Melvin.” “We’re going to have to change that.”
• “I’m GETTING to the llamas!”
• “Didn’t your dad buy Iceland?” “No! Just rented it. For Mother’s Day.”
• Independent learning, Traps Through the Ages
• Spit handshakes
• The Fish’s chair is sold, so he has to sit on books?
• “We’re across the road.” “It’s a wide road.”
• The swimming machine
• “Your name’s Willie?”
• The Fish’s escape ladder
• “Yeah, that’s not really a question.” “Whatever man, it rhymes!”
• Don’t ask a kid to set the oven if he asks if you want it in Kelvin
• Soy milk for happiness
• “SCRIMMAGE GIRLS! DEFEND… OUR… HONOR!”
• It took me forever to identify the evil headmaster is Kids in the Hall’s Scott Thompson
• “And that… is the worst Comic Sans Font I’ve ever seen.” “You talk?”
• The Fish in the trap
• “Shake hands, apologize, and get back to work.”
• Segway valet
• Bookshelf camo: “That was a long morning.”
• Picasso had a little-known “killer robots” period