accessAtlanta

'Monster House': Big-name producers cannot fix up precarious 'House'

Mr. Nebbercracker. That's some name -- walks like a buzzard and squawks like an evil version of Walter Brennan at his most dagnabbit cranky. Toothless and scrawny, with a bulbous head and antique suspenders, he's a mean old coot, berating anyone who gets near his house, especially children, who can be so easily led astray by the errant bounce of a basketball.

Sony Pictures 'Monster House' 2 out of 5 stars The verdict: Not funny, not scary Ñ who is 'Monster House' aimed at? Director: Gil Kenan Starring: Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Jason Lee Run time: 1 hour, 31 minutes. Release date: July 21, 2006 Rating: PG for scary images and sequences, thematic elements, some crude humor and brief language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Monster House'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Nebbercracker (voiced by a verminous Steve Buscemi) owns the title dwelling in the underwhelming computer cartoon "Monster House," a flailing marriage of kiddie comedy and grim frights that never enjoyably clicks. Whom the movie was made for is up in the air: It's too spooky for tots, too square for teens, too imaginatively bankrupt for adults. And it's pretty unfunny for most. A couple of pratfalls earned soggy laughs at a recent screening stuffed with children. It was a sad day at the multiplex.

The monster house sounds like some kind of haunted house, and it is, but in a more literal fashion, bringing fresh meaning to the phrase "She's as big as a house." Nebbercracker makes kids scram because his home holds a dreadful secret. It's possessed by a roaring, peevish spirit that transforms the entire place into a huge humanlike face, making its windows fiery eyes, its door a chomping mouth and its entryway carpet into a long, lashing tongue.

Occasionally, the house inhales neighbor kids' toys, or gulps down a dog or policeman, behaving a lot like Audrey II, the monstrous carnivorous plant in "The Little Shop of Horrors." And when it's really exercised, it sprouts branchlike arms and uproots itself from the earth. (Eventually, it even walks, recalling the much niftier ambulatory abode in "Howl's Moving Castle.")

The house, you might guess, looks like none other in the sparkly modern (and strangely lifeless) suburbia in which it stands. Its splintered, unpainted boards cast it in a pall of battered grays and browns, and it creaks and groans under the weight of its own gloomy past. Nebbercracker resides alone in his homely home, muttering to it and soothing it like a wizened Norman Bates.

All this weirdness attracts the curiosity of a pair of prepubescent pals, skinny and nerdy DJ (Mitchel Musso) and tubby Chowder (Sam Lerner, bringing to mind Bobby on "King of the Hill"), who, with googly hormonal eyes, recruit smarter-than-boys Jenny (Spencer Locke). It's not clear when the story is set, but the lack of computer and video gadgets, and that fact that the boys still spy from DJ's bedroom with a telescope, give the movie an old-fashioned tang.

After the house nearly kills them -- another day in the neighborhood -- the trio hazards the unspeakable: They go inside the building and try to "kill" it. Which is when all heck breaks loose, meaning the house breaks loose to terrorize the children. What follows, including the house's morbid, Tim Burton-esque back story, is more disturbing than fun.

"Monster House" has a shiny, rubbery look and boasts a few zesty effects and unsophisticated charms. But it's undermined by a feeble premise the filmmakers -- director Gil Kenan and three writers -- don't explore in any upward direction. They also forgot the jokes. The humor is at best wan, at worst nonexistent, making for a decidedly glum outing. If it was twice as funny as it is, it wouldn't be funny enough.

Big names can't help. For a film executive produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, "Monster House" lacks their snap and smarts. And a hipster cast -- Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Lee and Jon Heder -- doesn't mean much in a cartoon, particularly one as in need of a paint job as this one.