A Storyteller May Meet His Match: The Night Listener
Robin Williams, Toni Collette

Review by Breanne Boland
August 10, 2006 Issue

You see a lot of hard PG-13s, especially in recent years when theaters have sometimes severely restricted admittance to R movies, but rarely do you see a film you can describe as a hard PG. Monster House is one of the few and the proud.

On the day before Halloween, young, geeky DJ and his geekier friend Chowder finally confirm that the house across the street is evil, and they decide to stop it before it really hurts someone. Joining them is Jenny, an overachieving class president who gets to do more than function as the token girl. As they try to infiltrate the spiky, chompy boundaries of the house, it consumes people and wayward toys, among other casualties. However, the cranky, scary old man who owns the house and keeps its secrets makes saving the neighborhood even more difficult — as does the awkwardness of impending puberty.

There have been lots of animated movies in recent years trying hard to bring parents and other adults into the film as audience members, rather than merely as chaperones for the toy-buying market. Pixar movies have done it pretty well, blending high and low humor without the nudging, winking obviousness that plague the Shrek movies. Monster House is more like the former — there are jokes that kids just won’t get, but rather than being an awkward shout-out at the voting age set, they make sense in context. The main characters are on the cusp of being adults themselves, and so their jokes won’t always be within the grasp of a five year old.

And this is definitely not a film for toddlers. There were kids at the showing I went to, and they were mellow enough, but seriously — some of this movie is scary. The design of the house brings together every frightening, imagined detail of every rundown, abandoned house that has ever haunted the minds of neighborhood kids. It’s enormous, malevolent, and merciless, which makes for a great animated movie villain. The design of the film is generally great, goofy where necessary and the amalgam of every child’s nightmares when called for. It’s interesting, considering that it shares a production team with The Polar Express, pretty much the paradigm of the limitations of art imitating life, with its spooky, slightly off animated renditions of real people.

This is the perfect film for smart kids who like their stories honestly scary, without any of the saccharine or condescension that often accompanies movies and books aimed at “tweens.” The young characters have common sense, but aren’t perfect and noble. They do dangerous things, but freak out over small tasks. They’re normal, and they’re people, rather than just being our guides through a tale of a big, freaky house. For visuals alone, the film does quite a nice job, but the thing that makes it worthwhile is the writing. Without it, we’d just get a nice CGI slideshow. Instead, we get a solid story worthy of a well-done young adult novel. Plus we get enormous, angry, homicidal houses threatening the lives of children. Who could ask for anything more?

Bottom line: let this House devour you.

More from Breanne Boland

More movie reviews

(Top)