Miguel Arteta turns a single unlucky Tuesday into a family-wide chain reaction in this 2014 comedy built around the idea that misfortune, once it starts, rarely stops at one person.
What is Alexander Very Bad Day about?
Twelve-year-old Alexander wakes up with gum tangled in his hair and watches the day unravel from there — a ruined school photo, a disastrous class experiment, and a birthday party that goes nowhere near as planned. What sets the film apart from a simple kid-in-trouble story is the twist: his parents, played by Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner, and his older siblings each get pulled into their own spiraling catastrophes on the same afternoon, from a job interview under pressure to a driving test gone sideways. The household's shared bad luck becomes the film's real subject, turning one boy's complaint into a portrait of an entire family having the same rough day at once.
About the cast
Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner anchor the adult side of the cast as parents trying to keep their own days from falling apart, while Ed Oxenbould carries the title role as Alexander. Dylan Minnette and Kerris Dorsey play the older siblings swept into the same run of bad luck, rounding out a young ensemble built for broad, physical family comedy.
Context & significance
The film adapts Judith Viorst's picture book of the same name, a story many households already know from bedtime reading, and translates its short, escalating misfortunes into a feature-length script. Arteta, better known for smaller character pieces, brings a light touch to the slapstick without losing the book's central idea that a bad day is something to survive together rather than alone.
Watching Alexander Very Bad Day on Ktime
Alexander Very Bad Day streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, making it an easy pick for family movie night in Farsi. A free K-Time account is all that is needed to watch — no separate purchase or trial period involved, just a login and a night in with the whole household.