Monster House
“Every neighborhood has a house with a secret,� promises the trailer to Monster House. And those tantalizing secrets take three kids on an exciting adventure that will have children in nervous anticipation and adults, like me, in nostalgic contemplation.
Perhaps this year’s best animated film to date focuses on two boys, DJ (Mitchel Musso) and his friend, Chowder (Sam Lerner), whose ball rolls onto the lawn of their crotchety old neighbor Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi). The man is possessed with rage for anyone who trespasses on his lawn, so much so that in his anger at DJ he apparently suffers a heart attack. DJ feels remorse, while Chowder tries to convince him that their troubles are over. But are they? What explains the mysterious phone calls to DJ’s home or continuing disappearances?
One of the strengths of Monster House is that it is rooted in the familiar idiosyncrasies of American suburban life. Its message – “Whatever you do, don’t go on the lawn� – is a familiar refrain to many of us.
Monster House recalled for me several of the people in the neighborhood where I grew up – from the woman with her hoarded collection of footballs and baseballs to the man who would go into tirades if anything brushed a blade of his grass. Their bizarre and anti-social behavior always baffled my friends and me, until we discovered some deeper emotional issues that were at the root. The woman, for example, had an estranged relationship with her adult son, who now wanted nothing to do with his mother. Living a life of remorse, she acted out against boys who, for her, represented the kind of friends that took her son away.
But learning about the psychological underpinnings of adults’ emotional problems, didn’t excuse their behavior. Nor did it take away from the comical behavior we sometimes witnessed. Imagine a woman in her late 50s in a dress and heels, her arms loaded with groceries, sprinting down a sidewalk to try to snatch a football that came to rest against the edge of her lawn before my friend could retrieve it. Could you blame him for doing a Billy “White shoes� Johnson celebration with the ball after he beat her to it by only a step?
But Monster House is a delightful animated feature, because it takes instances like that and goes one step further. The behaviors of a frightening neighbor become personified in his residence, which snatches balls, kites, small pets – even police cars. When the boys rescue Jenny (Spencer Locke), a prep school over-achiever, they gain a new friend and a motivation for competition.
Adults don’t believe what’s going on. At best, failing to understand, they resort to simple solutions. “No more Mountain Dew,� says the babysitter. At worst, they’re self-absorbed and completely oblivious. “We’ll be back tomorrow night. Oh. If anything happens, call the police and hide in your closet,� says the mom (Catherine O’Hara). “He knows that,� adds the dad (Fred Willard). The message is clear, as sometimes it is in life, you’re on your own to figure this out. And so, DJ turns to his friends as he tries to deal with both the Monster House and puberty.
The PG film was directed by Gil Kenan with the motion-capture animation technique used in The Polar Express. But the characters in Monster House seem less artificial than their images in that film. There are a few scary points for little ones. (There was at least one moment when my 8-year-old was beginning to cover her eyes.) But, at its heart, Monster House is a love story that contains both the good and the bad – the positive feelings of love and the possessiveness that can result when love becomes overbearing.
The film provides a good illustration of St. Paul’s famous “love poem� in 1 Corinthians 13 in which he describes love’s nature as one that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.� We can learn that sometimes what appears to us as madness is driven by motives we do not fully understand, including love and self-sacrifice.
The 1-hour-and-31-minute film brings together Executive Producers Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, whose previous partnerships include Back to the Future. And Monster House shares some of the fun spirit of that classic ‘80s adventure trilogy. It’s a roller-coaster ride that surprises you with moments of tenderness and insight.
Perhaps this year’s best animated film to date focuses on two boys, DJ (Mitchel Musso) and his friend, Chowder (Sam Lerner), whose ball rolls onto the lawn of their crotchety old neighbor Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi). The man is possessed with rage for anyone who trespasses on his lawn, so much so that in his anger at DJ he apparently suffers a heart attack. DJ feels remorse, while Chowder tries to convince him that their troubles are over. But are they? What explains the mysterious phone calls to DJ’s home or continuing disappearances?
One of the strengths of Monster House is that it is rooted in the familiar idiosyncrasies of American suburban life. Its message – “Whatever you do, don’t go on the lawn� – is a familiar refrain to many of us.
Monster House recalled for me several of the people in the neighborhood where I grew up – from the woman with her hoarded collection of footballs and baseballs to the man who would go into tirades if anything brushed a blade of his grass. Their bizarre and anti-social behavior always baffled my friends and me, until we discovered some deeper emotional issues that were at the root. The woman, for example, had an estranged relationship with her adult son, who now wanted nothing to do with his mother. Living a life of remorse, she acted out against boys who, for her, represented the kind of friends that took her son away.
But learning about the psychological underpinnings of adults’ emotional problems, didn’t excuse their behavior. Nor did it take away from the comical behavior we sometimes witnessed. Imagine a woman in her late 50s in a dress and heels, her arms loaded with groceries, sprinting down a sidewalk to try to snatch a football that came to rest against the edge of her lawn before my friend could retrieve it. Could you blame him for doing a Billy “White shoes� Johnson celebration with the ball after he beat her to it by only a step?
But Monster House is a delightful animated feature, because it takes instances like that and goes one step further. The behaviors of a frightening neighbor become personified in his residence, which snatches balls, kites, small pets – even police cars. When the boys rescue Jenny (Spencer Locke), a prep school over-achiever, they gain a new friend and a motivation for competition.
Adults don’t believe what’s going on. At best, failing to understand, they resort to simple solutions. “No more Mountain Dew,� says the babysitter. At worst, they’re self-absorbed and completely oblivious. “We’ll be back tomorrow night. Oh. If anything happens, call the police and hide in your closet,� says the mom (Catherine O’Hara). “He knows that,� adds the dad (Fred Willard). The message is clear, as sometimes it is in life, you’re on your own to figure this out. And so, DJ turns to his friends as he tries to deal with both the Monster House and puberty.
The PG film was directed by Gil Kenan with the motion-capture animation technique used in The Polar Express. But the characters in Monster House seem less artificial than their images in that film. There are a few scary points for little ones. (There was at least one moment when my 8-year-old was beginning to cover her eyes.) But, at its heart, Monster House is a love story that contains both the good and the bad – the positive feelings of love and the possessiveness that can result when love becomes overbearing.
The film provides a good illustration of St. Paul’s famous “love poem� in 1 Corinthians 13 in which he describes love’s nature as one that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.� We can learn that sometimes what appears to us as madness is driven by motives we do not fully understand, including love and self-sacrifice.
The 1-hour-and-31-minute film brings together Executive Producers Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, whose previous partnerships include Back to the Future. And Monster House shares some of the fun spirit of that classic ‘80s adventure trilogy. It’s a roller-coaster ride that surprises you with moments of tenderness and insight.
