MONSTER HOUSE
voices: steve buscemi, mitchel musso, maggie gyllenhaal...
director: gil kenan
writers: dan harmon, rob schrab, and pamela pettler
date: 07/16/06
reviewer: Suj
rating: 10/10
The wonder years, those days spent as a child aimlessly walking around without a care in the world. It’s in these years that you’re faced with the promise of endless opportunities, be it the opportunity to stay up way past your bedtime, eat an unhealthy amount of teenage mutant ninja turtle’s cookies (am I the only one who remembers these), and watch cartoons at all hours of the day in your underwear with several bowls of count chocula cereal in hand. These moments in your history, this era of time that is called childhood is indeed the best years of ones life. You’re not boggled down with responsibilities and decisions instead wide-eyed innocence becomes the buzzword.
It’s was during my wonder years where I watched numerous flicks that captured my attention and blossomed my imagination. These films would soon became staples in my childhood movie-watching upbringing. I remember watching 3 Ninjas and after which wearing my brothers old karate uniform stalking the house in complete stealth mode. I remember watching the Goonies and making a makeshift treasure map and getting into all sorts of periling conundrums while running from the Fratelli family within my imagination. I can name drop a whole bunch of flicks like ET, The Wizard, Stand By Me, and The Monster Squad all of which brought out many misadventures and captivated me with their stories and the all-out fun of it all. I love these movies and as the older I get, these films whenever I see them on television or insert them into a DVD player still manage to hold with them the magic, the ability to make me smile, and more importantly bring me back to that wide-eyed innocence of those carefree days.
My taste of movies changed dramatically as I grew older. I became a devout student in the school of Tarantino. Movies with more substance, harder subject matter, immense style, sights and sounds. Though, deep down inside I’ve been searching and waiting for Hollywood to make a movie that would recapture the aura of the 200+ words that preceded this here sentence. And now, I believe I have found that movie in Monster House.
Monster House is full of mystery, mythology, and well a monster that fucking eats people. This movie captures all the mood and style of those classic 80s family films, so much so that it wears it on its sleeve. If you were to jumble together all the films mentioned up above in this reviews opening two paragraphs, turn it upside down, right side up again, then throw it into a computer you would get Monster House.
It’s positively ingenious with a story so simple, so seemingly, straight out of childhood that you can’t quite imagine how it’s never been told before - When kids discover the house next door’s terrible secret they tell the adults, the authorities, but no one believes them. So what do they do? You’re damn right, they set out to stop it before it hurts anyone else – fucking Monster Squad style, Goonies style, 3 ninjas style.
The best thing about this movie, aside from it being extremely entertaining and worldly reminiscent of my childhood movie-watching upbring, is that it’s actually about something. It's about loneliness, adventure, and sacrifice. It's about growing up and realizing the world is way bigger and far worst than we are, yet still rising to meet the challenge. Ultimately, it’s about all these things while being, simply put, fun.
CGI animation never looked better, the film just looks beautiful. I’ve never wanted to bang an animated fictional character as much as I want to bang the animated embodiment of Maggie Gyllenhaal in this movie. The film sports a mesmerizing composition with fluid camera motion. It’s an astonishing painting with a canvas provided by writers Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, and Pamela Pettler which is all fleshed out and brought to life with style and flare by director Gil Kenan. It’s a wonderment of accomplishments.
Monster House is funny, scary, and most importantly it has the word adventure etched right into its heart. It’s a movie that will have the parents respond after its viewing not with an "aw, wasn’t that cute" but instead with a "wow! that was fantastic" and as for the kids, well they’ll be jumping like kids on crack with a smile that would finally get Michael Jackson convicted. It’s just a fun movie people, for the parents, the kids, and the jaded scenesters and hipsters who will remember what it was like to be a child without a care in the world.
director: gil kenan
writers: dan harmon, rob schrab, and pamela pettler
date: 07/16/06
reviewer: Suj
rating: 10/10
The wonder years, those days spent as a child aimlessly walking around without a care in the world. It’s in these years that you’re faced with the promise of endless opportunities, be it the opportunity to stay up way past your bedtime, eat an unhealthy amount of teenage mutant ninja turtle’s cookies (am I the only one who remembers these), and watch cartoons at all hours of the day in your underwear with several bowls of count chocula cereal in hand. These moments in your history, this era of time that is called childhood is indeed the best years of ones life. You’re not boggled down with responsibilities and decisions instead wide-eyed innocence becomes the buzzword.
It’s was during my wonder years where I watched numerous flicks that captured my attention and blossomed my imagination. These films would soon became staples in my childhood movie-watching upbringing. I remember watching 3 Ninjas and after which wearing my brothers old karate uniform stalking the house in complete stealth mode. I remember watching the Goonies and making a makeshift treasure map and getting into all sorts of periling conundrums while running from the Fratelli family within my imagination. I can name drop a whole bunch of flicks like ET, The Wizard, Stand By Me, and The Monster Squad all of which brought out many misadventures and captivated me with their stories and the all-out fun of it all. I love these movies and as the older I get, these films whenever I see them on television or insert them into a DVD player still manage to hold with them the magic, the ability to make me smile, and more importantly bring me back to that wide-eyed innocence of those carefree days.
My taste of movies changed dramatically as I grew older. I became a devout student in the school of Tarantino. Movies with more substance, harder subject matter, immense style, sights and sounds. Though, deep down inside I’ve been searching and waiting for Hollywood to make a movie that would recapture the aura of the 200+ words that preceded this here sentence. And now, I believe I have found that movie in Monster House.
Monster House is full of mystery, mythology, and well a monster that fucking eats people. This movie captures all the mood and style of those classic 80s family films, so much so that it wears it on its sleeve. If you were to jumble together all the films mentioned up above in this reviews opening two paragraphs, turn it upside down, right side up again, then throw it into a computer you would get Monster House.
It’s positively ingenious with a story so simple, so seemingly, straight out of childhood that you can’t quite imagine how it’s never been told before - When kids discover the house next door’s terrible secret they tell the adults, the authorities, but no one believes them. So what do they do? You’re damn right, they set out to stop it before it hurts anyone else – fucking Monster Squad style, Goonies style, 3 ninjas style.
The best thing about this movie, aside from it being extremely entertaining and worldly reminiscent of my childhood movie-watching upbring, is that it’s actually about something. It's about loneliness, adventure, and sacrifice. It's about growing up and realizing the world is way bigger and far worst than we are, yet still rising to meet the challenge. Ultimately, it’s about all these things while being, simply put, fun.
CGI animation never looked better, the film just looks beautiful. I’ve never wanted to bang an animated fictional character as much as I want to bang the animated embodiment of Maggie Gyllenhaal in this movie. The film sports a mesmerizing composition with fluid camera motion. It’s an astonishing painting with a canvas provided by writers Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, and Pamela Pettler which is all fleshed out and brought to life with style and flare by director Gil Kenan. It’s a wonderment of accomplishments.
Monster House is funny, scary, and most importantly it has the word adventure etched right into its heart. It’s a movie that will have the parents respond after its viewing not with an "aw, wasn’t that cute" but instead with a "wow! that was fantastic" and as for the kids, well they’ll be jumping like kids on crack with a smile that would finally get Michael Jackson convicted. It’s just a fun movie people, for the parents, the kids, and the jaded scenesters and hipsters who will remember what it was like to be a child without a care in the world.
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