OCC Movie Review: Monster House

So I wrote this once, but it was lost in the great beyond of blogger's issues.

Anyway, last night myself and the Usualgang of idiots watched the movie Monster House. So, I again will try and give my thoughts.


Monster House was a film I really wanted to see in the movie theater. It was the first of a string of CG features to come out in a 3-week span of time followed by Ant Bully and Barnyard. As a result of things that I don't quite remember I never made it to the film. After watching the DVD...

I wish that I had.

The plot of Monster House is simple enough. 2 young boys D.J. (Mitchel Musso( and Chowder (Sam Lerner) find something suspicious about Mr. Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi) and his need to keep children off of his long. D.J. tries to retrieve a basketball from the yard, has an encounter with Nebbercracker who ends up having a heart attack and is taken off in an ambulance.
While Nebbercracker is gone and D.J. believes he killed him, the House seems to have an attitude and a life all its own. It starts when D.J. gets a call from the house, only the house is empty.
The adults in D.J.'s life don't seem to be very interested in his story. His parents are out of town, his Goth babysitter who wants to be known only as Z (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is pre-occupied with her boyfriend Bones (Jason Lee) who enjoys making a sport of D.J.'s claims. However, after Bones disappears at the House, D.J. recruits Chowder to help him get to the bottom of things.
Enter Jenny (Spencer Locke) who is a young girl that the boys rescue as she attempts to sell candy at the house and the trio are off on an adventure of their lives. Throw in some difficulties with 2 wise-cracking police officers (Kevin James and Nick Cannon) and their subsequent disappearances and its a struggle for the 3 to get anyone to take them seriously.
The 3 set out to solve the mystery of the House, the disappearances and Mr. Nebbercracker. After an encounter with a video game playing master named Skull (Jon Heter) who instructs them that in order to destroy the house they have to destroy its heart. Unfortunately for our 3 would-be heros, that requires venturing inside.
As the movie progresses we learn the secret of the house, of why Nebbercracker attempts to keep children off of the lawn and with some help from an unlikely source, things are brought to a typical happy ever-after ending.

I thought that the story was quite strong. It had some nice twists and turns and was engaging enough. It wasn't overly complicated as at the end of the movie we know all the reasons for why everything happened to make it make sense. The voice cast was particularly strong as all of the children played their roles perfectly and in edition to the names listed above we have appearances by Fred Willard (D.J.'s dad) Catherine O'Hara (D.J.'s mom) and Kathleen Turner.

The dialog was natural and had its moments of laugh out loud commedy. I think that my favorite line from the film is one that probably didn't draw that many laughs. After one of his attempts to destroy the house, D.J. exclaims "That's not fair!" I like this line because it sums up the kid mentality so well. It shows that even in a life-or-death situation kids go with what they know and it was the perfect reaction.
The Antagonist, in the form of the house is a formitable opponent. It's not too big of a spoiler to reveal that this like most other films does not end with the villan victorious. The fun though is getting to that point.

I haven't checked out the rest of the DVD yet but the movie was really well done. I give major credit to the sound designers as they did a good job with making the House sound creepy and old throughout the film. This is a CG picture but it is rated PG and may cause younger viewers and the stupid to have nightmares.

I think that this is probably one of the better films that I have seen all year. I highly recommend this movie to anyone. The brisque 90 minute run-time is perfect and I can honestly say this film sucked me in. When it started I was tired and disinterested and wanted to sleep. When it was over I was awake and highly engaged.

I'd say that for CG features that came out in 2006 I would rank them like this:

1. Cars
   
2. Monster House
   
3. Over the Hedge
   
4. Hoodwinked
   
5. Ice Age 2
   
6. Open Season

If you want a score, I'll give this film a 8.5 out of 10.

Note: My scale is really a 9 point scale as I have never awarded a film a perfect 10.

So if you've got some time to kill there are worse ways you could do it than by watching this film. It fits the Halloween spirit and hopefully it finds a greater audience on DVD than it did in its theatrical release.