The 2010 movie adaptation for the Ramona Quimby series of books. Instead of adapting a single book, the movie hits on most of the major story lines of the series and compresses everything into a single year (the series takes place over a span of six years).
The film provides examples of:
- Adaptation Title Change: Ramona and Beezus is based on the Ramona Quimby series.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: For the plot line of Mr. Quimby's goal of becoming an art teacher. In the books, he ultimately gives it up to become a supermarket manager instead, with the Hard Truth Aesop of "We can't always do what we want in life, so we do the best we can." The movie has a happier ending, as he becomes the new art teacher at Ramona's school.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Beezus in the books isn't ugly, per se, but somewhat gawky and acne-ridden like a typical adolescent. Not so here. Being played by Selena Gomez helps.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In the books, Ramona's baby sister, Roberta, is born after Aunt Bea's wedding. Here, Roberta has already been born from the start (in fact, she's the reason why the house is getting renovated), in order to show the wedding as the true climax of the movie.
- Adaptational Timespan Change: The movie hits on most the major plot events of the entire book series: Ramona's father getting laid off (from "Ramona and her Father"), their house getting renovated (from "Ramona the Brave"), Ramona's runaway attempt (from "Ramona and her Mother"), Ramona throwing up in class (from "Ramona Quimby: Age 8") and Aunt Bea getting married (from "Ramona Forever"), etc.) by making them all happen in a relatively short time period.
- Adapted Out: Grandpa Day (Mrs. Quimby and Aunt Bea's father) was mentioned a couple of times throughout the series, and shows up in person in "Ramona Forever" for Aunt Bea's wedding. He did not appear in the movie at all.
- Aerith and Bob: The titular characters, of course.
- All There in the Script: Ramona's music teacher is named Mr. Clay, but it's only mentioned in the credits and not in the film itself.
- Award-Bait Song: "Live Like There's No Tomorrow", by Selena Gomez & The Scene.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Ramona has her moments, but Willa Jean is the real culprit here.
- Can't Spit It Out: Beezus finds it difficult to talk to her crush, saying that things are different now.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mrs. Meachem, Ramona's teacher. As Ramona is a bit young, she doesn't always get it.
- Embarrassing Nickname:Beezus: Who could ever love someone named Beezus?Ramona: Jesus?
- Doubles as a Shout-Out to "Ramona the Brave," where Beezus gets teased by boys who overhear Ramona's nickname and start chanting, "Jesus, Beezus! Beezus, Jesus!"
- Exiled to the Couch: Ramona and Beezus' dad goes to sleep on the hide-a-bed couch after a fight with their mom over their mortgage and financial woes.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Susan tells Ramona that she suspects that things might be rough at her home, but that is no excuse for her to take it out on Susan and tug on her hair.
- Funny Photo Phrase: On School Picture Day, Howie asks the photographer if he ever gets bored of telling the students to say, "Cheese", so he tells Ramona to say, "Peas". Unfortunately, she instead makes a disgusted expression remembering her baby sister spitting peas on her.
- Gosh Darn It to Heck!: As in "Ramona the Brave", Ramona is so angry she threatens to say a bad word. So she shouts "GUTS!", but rather than get in trouble, she gets laughed at.
- Innocently Insensitive: Susan attempts to brighten Ramona's bad day by telling her that after her own father lost his job, her parents divorced and he moved to Tacoma, but her life got better because they both got new jobs with more money and now she gets two checks for her birthday. Unfortunately, this just makes an already unwell Ramona feel worse about her family life and she projectile vomits in her music class.
- Lampshade Hanging: Near the beginning of the film, Mrs. Quimby says "Henry Huggins? I haven't heard that name in awhile." The Ramona books were a Spinoff of the Henry Huggins series and he was prominently featured in the first few books. His role gradually decreased and by the end, the time when the film is set, he hadn't been mentioned for awhile.
- Never Trust a Trailer: While the movie has a lot of humor in it, the trailers make it seem like a slapstick comedy.
- New Old Flame: Aunt Bea and Uncle Hobart dated during their school years, and broke up at some point. They rekindle their relationship and are married by the end of the film.
- Never My Fault: Beezus blames Ramona for embarrassing her in front of her crush at the lemonade stand. Even though Ramona did try to warn Beezus not to drink the lemonade that had a bee inside of it that stung Beezus in her mouth and caused her to spit all over her crush, Beezus just brushes her off and puts all the blame on Ramona instead.
- Non-Indicative Title: Despite the title being an inversion of the first book's title ("Beezus and Ramona"), that book has the least amount of material used in the movie, and most of the film's plot actually comes from the fourth and seventh books Ramona and Her Father and Ramona Forever.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Henry Huggins becomes Beezus's Love Interest in the movie, even though he rarely appears in the Ramona books, implying that their friendship has somewhat drifted apart since the events of Henry Huggins series.
- Relationship Compression: Inverted with Uncle Hobart and Aunt Bea. Their relationship in the novels is developed off-screen. Here, they flirt a lot, and are almost always seen together. The movie even shows Hobart proposing to Bea in front of the two families.
- The Runaway: The attention seeking variety, Ramona tries to run away from home after getting into a fight with her family to "punish" them. She quickly comes back when her parents calmly let her do so, but her mother makes her suitcase too heavy for her to carry.
- Scarily Specific Story: Ramona comes home from school with a bad report card. That night, Beezus scares her with a story about a monster who feeds on "pests with bad report cards".
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Bea and Hobart have a water fight with one another (due to a misunderstanding accidentally started by Beezus) and they end up engaged after Hobart finds a box of memorabilia left over their high school days and he proposes to her with their gum ball machine ring.
- Tagline: "A little sister goes a long way."
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Ramona vomits in her music class after coming down with the flu. It's not shown, but the class and the music teacher are all disgusted.
