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Hungry
Home MONSTER HOUSE: Directed by Gil Kenan. Screenplay by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler. Executive producers, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. With the voices of Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Steve Buscemi, Jason Lee and Kathleen Turner. Columbia Pictures, 2006. PG. 91 minutes.
It's hard not to wonder who decided Monster House should be a summer movie. It begins the day before Halloween, with a deliciously crisp shot that follows a single leaf's descent onto the clipped lawn of a ramshackle house. Created with motion capture, a combination of live action and computer animation, the movie is bright but shadowed, rich with the colors of fall and ripe with the haunting notions kids get about the creepy house down the street. But here we are in the middle of summer, and seasonal incongruity isn't Monster House's only weakness. Twelve-year-old DJ (Mitchel Musso), whose head of snap-on Lego hair seems to weigh down his spindly body, has a feeling about the run-down house across the street. Neighborhood crankpot Mr. Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), all spidery limbs and bulbous nose, is notorious for chasing kids off his lawn, but DJ's noticed creepier things happening. Just before DJ's parents conveniently leave for the night, Nebbercracker has a nasty fall and is taken to the hospital. DJ's babysitter Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal, always a lively presence) is distracted by her doofy boyfriend, Bones (Jason Lee). The time is ripe for exploring. Alas, if only the house had much of an interior to explore. After a series of false starts, DJ, his friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and smart-cookie candy saleswoman Jenny (Spencer Locke), whom the house had intended to have as an afternoon snack, make their way inside. For a few tense moments, Monster House seems as if it might pick up the pace after its leisurely first half. It does, slightly, but the excitement feels hollow, like the amusement park ride the film has already been compared to. You go in, you ooh and aah briefly at the effects, which are at times spooky and inspired, and you know, the whole time, that everyone on the ride will come out the other side just fine. It's a strange line for a film with tween characters to walk — very scary at points (possibly too much so for small kids), but unwilling to put anything real at stake in a way that would make the adventure more meaningful. Director Gil Kenan takes a keen interest in the monstrous house's effective, evil anthropomorphism: Windows stand in for eyes, broken slats of wood for teeth, a long carpet for a tongue and Kathleen Turner for its personality. Turner, like the rest of the cast, even those in minor roles, is stellar. Steve Buscemi is note-perfect as crotchety old man Nebbercracker; as Zee's stoner boyfriend, Jason Lee speaks with a gleeful tinge of old-school Keanu Reeves; Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) gets a giggle as the local videogame champion (at a game called Thou Art Dead) and keeper of obscure paranormal knowledge. Each character has a moment or two where he or she elevates Monster House above the average moderately charming animated feature, but, like the leaf settling on the house's lawn, it doesn't stay afloat too long. Monster House opens Friday, July 21 at Cinemark & Cinema World.
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