11-year-old Greg Heffley is apprehensive about beginning middle school. On the first day, he quickly discovers the ups and downs, such as the missing stall doors in the boys’ bathroom and the difficulties of obtaining a seat during lunch. During P.E. class, Greg and his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, escape from a game of Gladiator and learn from their friend, Chirag Gupta, about a moldy piece of cheese on the basketball court that makes anyone who touches it an outcast and that the only way to get rid of what is known as “the Cheese Touch” is to pass it on to someone else. They also meet Angie Steadman, a seventh-grader who isolates herself from the other students to “survive”. Greg states his intention of becoming the most popular student in school.Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2017.
The next day, Greg signs up for wrestling but suffers back-to-back humiliating losses against Fregley, an eccentric outcast, and his elementary school arch-enemy, Patty Farrell, making him decide to quit wrestling. On Halloween, while Greg and Rowley are out trick-or-treating, a group of teenage boys, Pete Hosey, Carter and Wade, drive by in a pickup truck and spray a fire extinguisher at them. When Greg threatens to call the police, the boys chase him and Rowley to Greg’s grandmother’s house, but the latter two escape them after Greg accidentally damages the truck.
The boys join the Safety Patrol, and they try out for a contest that offers a student a chance to become the new cartoonist for the school paper as a replacement for Brian Little, who recently got glandular fever, causing him to be out for 3 months. Greg accidentally breaks Rowley’s arm, prompting other students to take pity on Rowley, thus making him popular. Greg’s envy towards him only increases when Rowley wins the cartoonist contest. During a Safety Patrol assignment, Greg walks kindergartners down a neighborhood street without Rowley, but panics when he encounters a truck identical to the teenagers’ from Halloween and hides the kids in a construction zone. After being spotted by neighbor, Mrs. Irvine, who mistakes him for Rowley, he abandons the kindergarteners and flees.