Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
July’s got some films I really want to see, like MIAMI VICE and this one from director Gil Kenan. We’ve had a few reviews of it before, and I expect we’ll see several of them in the next few weeks, as Sony seems to be screening the heck out of this one. Be warned... this review’s got some pretty sizeable spoilers in it...
Moriarty and the rest of AICN
This is my first time writing for any movie website. TBers, please be gentle. Gentle like you weren't on X3.
So about five days ago I saw the, well, not wondrously hyped up (to my knowledge) performance capture family flick, Monster House. The screening was pretty full of families with their filthy offspring and jaded teens with their "rock and roll" clothing and "skating board" shoes. But nobody's interested in who I saw the movie with! No, not at all. I'm supposed to talk about the quality of the film. Well then, I guess I'll do that. But first, a note: this review might contain spoilers, so if you're really itching to let the movie unfold its mysteries without your brain yelling, "I know what happens! I read it on some of the internets!" well move on to a different article. Or don't. Honestly it makes no difference to me.
I was one of the people who was really freaked out by Polar Express. The animation had no soul, the eyes were too glassy, the mouths seemed to be infinite abysses. For Monster House the character facial expressionsn and movement are much less awkward. Sure, the scene where a basketball is dribbled looks oddly off, but that's just me being a nit-picker. The rest of the aspects of the flick are pretty decent as well, as you'll read about after my atrociously lengthy overview of the plot.
Ok, well here we go with that overview I promised. You got your main hero kid, DJ (Mitchell Musso), who's left with a baby-sitter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) for a couple days (the second of the days being Halloween) by his dentist parents (Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara). You got your fat plucky sidekick, Chowder (Sam Lerner), and Jenny, the goody two-shoes girl who both DJ and Chowder have weird and unfamiliar feelings about (Spencer Locke). Across the street from DJ is Mr. Nebbercracker (The Buscemi). Mr. Nebbercracker is cranky and has a creepy house. DJ is paranoid and keeps tracks of the toys Mr. Nebbercracker confiscates for being on his lawn. As DJ spied on Nebbercracker, I couldn't help thinking about how much MORE awesome Rear Window would've been if the apartment building across from Jimmy Stewart grew a giant mouth and swallowed Jimmy whole.
Things get started pretty quick with the two boys accidentally causing ol' Nebbercracker to have a heart attack, thus causing Nebbercracker's house to get all pissy and monster-y. Surely, the boys think, Nebbercracker's ghost has inhabited the house. It's up to them, obviously, to destroy the beast. Jenny enters the story. The adults don't believe the kids. Yada yada yada. Here's what you really need to get out of this: three youngsters try to stop a house inhabited by an unrestful-like spirit from wreaking havoc on Halloween night. They go inside the house, discover some creepy stuff (like Nebbercracker's wife's skeleton covered in concrete), the house gets upset, they escape, everybody's still safe and alive.
There's a twist though, as Mr. Nebbercracker returns home. The heart attack wasn't fatal after all. As it turns out, it's Nebbercracker's wife who is the spirit of the house. Ol' Nebbercracker stole his wife from a freak show where she worked as the fat lady. During the construction of their new home, Mrs. Nebbercracker got harassed by some kids. Mr. Nebbercracker tried to calm her down, but the old broad wound up tripping into the unfinished home's basement and the cement mixer kind of dumped a whole bunch of, well, cement on her body. The whole back story was unexpected, entertaining, and really gave as much depth to Nebbercracker as a family movie could.
The house gets REALLY pissed when Nebbercracker decides to help the kids, and here's where the animation on the house (I guess I should've mentioned this earlier) goes from being impressive to just plain awesome and, well, rather fun. While the human skin textures certainly left a lot to be desired, the house was perfectly realized in its horrific (PG horrific mind you) glory. This house should get its own "Godzilla vs." movie.
The movie winds up being a decent adventure comedy with that fun sense of light horror mystery that really delighted me as a kid. I never found myself wanting the movie to hurry up or wanting any of the main characters to die a painful death (something I wanted out of Polar Express). I never cringed at a line reading. I never got distracted by any poor animation or plot holes. The families around me seemed to enjoy it enough, and I hope that a lot of families do go to see this flick. It's nothing close to what, say, Pixar could've done, but it's a movie that at its core relies on the charm of its characters rather than tons of flashy set pieces and creepy songs (Polar Express, I'm lookin' at you).
In conclusion, I really didn't like The Polar Express. I really did like Monster House. I feel slightly less pessimistic about Beowulf now. If you use this, call me Officer Lockstock.
Wow. Sounds good. Can’t wait to see this one in 3D as soon as possible.
"Moriarty" out.
