As far as titles go, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" is a mouthful, a legendarily lengthy one that brings up memories of "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" (ones preferably left forgotten). The Judith Viost children’s book the new movie is based on, however, is inversely pretty short, cramming a day’s worth of grade school misery into a mere 32 pages.

How does one stretch a barely 30-page short story of accumulated gripes and grumbles into a feature length film? In the case of "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," the answer is simple: poorly. By the time its 82-minute running time comes to a grateful close – and all of the cliché, contrived and crude chaos with it – Alexander’s bad day has morphed into the audience’s bad day.

Young Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) is having a bad day and, judging by his wearied exasperation, possibly a bad life just in general. He woke up with gum in his hair, forcing an impromptu haircut. No one is going to his birthday party, even his best friend, because the coolest kid in the school is having his on the same day. His crush barely notices him, unless he’s face-planting on the front lawn or burning down the science lab with her notes (but seriously, why are 12-year-olds working with Bunsen burners in the first place?).

The worst part: All the while Alex suffers through the awkward bad day from hell, the rest of his family is having the best 24 hours ever. His stay-at-home dad (a surprisingly joke-deprived Steve Carell) finally has a promising job interview lined up, his mom (Jennifer Garner, trying very hard for laughs and almost succeeding) is up for a promotion, his sister Emily (Kerris Dorsey, "Ray Donovan") is gearing up for the lead in a school production of "Peter Pan" and his brother Anthony (Dylan Minnette) is probably going to be prom duke with the coolest – and cattiest – girl in school (Bella Thorne).

He just has to pass his driving test. Can’t imagine how any of these monumental life moments could go wrong.

As pieced together by Rob Lieber’s blunt screenplay, Alexander’s adjective-filled bad day is less an actual cohesive story and more simply lining up dominoes of predictable humiliation. The push comes in the form of a birthday wish from Alexander, which makes the next day wonderful for him, but a nightmare for everyone else. I don’t know Lieber needed to use "birthday magic" to explain everyone’s awful day, other than the far more reasonable "that’s just life sometimes."

Then again, if there’s one thing you won’t find among the hijinks in "Alexander," it’s reasonable behavior. The script keeps forcing the characters into dumb actions in tediously contrived scenarios. Dad’s interview goes wrong because he dopily drags his baby along. Emily’s show goes awry because she decided to drink a bottle of cold medicine beforehand. Mom has to bike across the city to stop a book reading because apparently cell phones don’t exist. Anthony gets tricked into answering a phone during his driving test, a move barely more intelligent than getting tricked into asking to buy drugs from a uniformed cop.

There’s simply little fun or humor to be had in watching seemingly decent people behave in blatantly irrational and stupid ways just because the script had no better ideas. When Carell is faced with either wearing a puke-smelling shirt or a pirate blouse, it’s hard to restrain oneself from yelling, "How are those the only options?!" at the screen.

And that’s the most terrible part of "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day": It has no ideas. Given a 32-page book of complaining to adapt, the script simply pads the movie out with tired and predictable set-ups, jokes and embarrassments that are obvious from the first 15 minutes. Prom, a job interview, a promotion and a big show are four of the most overused plot tropes, so the fact that "Alexander" pulls all of them out nicely demonstrates its utter lack of imagination. Even the Emily’s botching of "Peter Pan" comes essentially cut-and-pasted from "21 Jump Street."

As expected, all of the antics come with family group hugs and lessons learned. While director Miguel Arteta (who directed the surprisingly solid "Cedar Rapids") spends most of the film lifelessly presenting gags and moving onto the next, he does provide a dash of sincere sweetness to the family bonding and the optimistic end lesson of fighting through even the worst times. It’s a very nice, relatable message – even if it comes undermined by the annoyingly loud shenanigans and their dopily magical origins.

Plus, Arteta has a strong, naturally pleasant cast, even though they go mostly underutilized. Carell has surprisingly little to do other than a variation on his usual flustered frustration – let’s call it flustration – and does anybody know why Donald Glover is here for such an empty nothing of a two-scene role?

Only Garner makes much of a comedic impact, with her amusingly escalating franticness. She usually plays polite, stern and tightly wound, so to watch her uncoil into rage and panic is one of the film’s few funny spots. Her banging her funny bone on a wall is infinitely more humorous than any of the movie’s kangaroo-related hijinks (did I forget to mention there are kangaroo hijinks? Good, because they are utterly meaningless).

Those few decent performances and moments, however, are buried underneath a pile of forced manic tomfoolery, and puke and penis jokes (is this the first Disney movie where the word "penis" is used?) that are oddly both crass and bland. "Alexander" may not quite be terrible or horrible, but his bad day won’t do yours any favors.