Tagline: There goes the neighborhood.
Monster House is an exciting and hilarious thrill-ride tale about three kids (Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke) who must do battle with a mysterious home that is determined to eat every trick or treater in sight on Halloween.
Monster House is an utterly unique and cleverly conceived animated feature from visionary executive producers Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg that brings together a stellar cast of actors including Steve Buscemi (Monsters, Inc.), Nick Cannon (Drumline), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary), Kevin James (The King of Queens), Jason Lee (The Incredibles), Catherine O’Hara (The Nightmare Before Christmas), Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) and Kathleen Turner (Who Framed Roger Rabbit).
In Columbia Pictures’ comedy thrill-ride Monster House, three kids (newcomers Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke) cross over to the other side of the street to unlock a mystery and experience the greatest adventure of their lives.
DJ (Musso), the kid across the street, has the plan. Jenny (Locke), the newcomer, has the brains. And Chowder (Lerner), DJ’s best friend, doesn’t have a clue. Twelve-year-old DJ Walters, who is caught in that awkward moment between childhood and the onset of puberty, has too much time on his hands and has taken it into his head that there’s something weird about old man Nebbercracker’s house across the street. Things keep disappearing into the dilapidated structure: basketballs, tricycles, toys and pets. Come to think of it, whatever happened to Mrs. Nebbercracker?
It’s the day before Halloween and DJ and his candy-friendly pal Chowder have a run-in with Mr. Nebbercracker after their basketball wanders onto his lawn and is mysteriously swept into the house. When the house tries to swallow their new friend Jenny and no one believes the frightened trio’s claims that the house is up to no good, it’s up to them to investigate.
They turn for advice to the only person on the planet who might even remotely understand what’s going on, the wise one they call Skull, a 20-something slacker pizza chef and master of the arcade machine who once played a video game for four days straight on one single quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk and an adult diaper. “I have heard tell of man-made structures becoming possessed by a human soul,”
Skull tells them.
You mean the house is alive? Yikes!
Skull tells them the only way to stop the house from gulping down everything in sight is by striking at its heart, which the kids figure out must be the perpetually-fueled furnace in the basement. They come up with what seems to be a foolproof plan — a vacuum cleaner disguised as a human dummy filled with cold medicine. The kids offer up their bait to the house, figuring that once it’s asleep, they can sneak in and put out the furnace with their squirt guns.
Their little plan goes awry, though, and when the house starts chasing them down the street — that’s right, chasing them down the street! — they must join forces to once again make the neighborhood safe for trick or treaters.
Monster House (2006)
Directed by: Gil Kenan
Starring: Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Matthew Fahey, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine O’Hara, Ryan Newman, Spencer Locke, Kathleen Turner
Screenplay by: Dan Harmon, Gil Kenan, Pamela Pettler, Rob Schrab
Production Design by: Ed Verreaux
Cinematography by: Xavier Grobet
Film Editing by: Fabienne Rawley, Adam P. Scott
Costume Design by: Ruth Myers
Set Decoration by: Kate Sullivan
Art Direction by: Norman Newberry, Greg Papalia
Music by: Douglas Pipes
MPAA Rating: PG for scary images and sequences, thematic elements, some crude humor, language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: July 21, 2006
Views: 57
