When this movie came out, Charlie bugged me to go see it in a theatre. I thought, from his description, that it was some teen horror flick, and so I declined. I finally figured out it was an animated film, which I often like, so I relented when I recently enrolled in Netflix.
I just could not be sorrier.
Monster House is about a possessed house, a la The Shining. I’m not a prude, in the least, and I found this pretty morally objectionable for my kid. At the point where the chubby kid (who, of course, has a crappy film chubby kid name – Chowder) says, “but I don’t want to steal drugs from my dad,” and the next thing you know he’s stealing cough syrup from his Dad’s pharmacy, I was out. There are also pee in a bottle jokes, a teenage babysitter who drinks beer and makes out with her boyfriend, and a circus fat lady being pelted with tomatoes and eggs. Oh, and also, the three pre-teen characters figure out how to make the house barf. Cool.
I believe the word is dreck. I didn’t like the effect it had on Charlie, who jumped right into the fat kid/fat lady humor.
I’ll give it one star out of five for the animation of the teenage girl character, which has pre-adolescent subtlety. And now I hope I never have to think of this movie again.
