'Monster House': A teched-up haunted house story

Come back, "Cars."

I was too harsh. Your adrenalized platitudes are nothing compared to the monstrosity that is "Monster House."

Sony Pictures 'Monster House' D The verdict: Monstrously mediocre. 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

The picture is yet another entry in the if-you-animate-it-they-will come ("they" being parents and kids) summer sweepstakes. Not only are "Cars" "Over the Hedge" and "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" still hanging around, but the next few weeks bring "The Ant Bully" and "Barnyard."

However, this isn't even cuddly animals/cars/bugs animation. Executive producer Robert Zemeckis has apparently decreed "Monster House" be made in the same creepy style as "The Polar Express" (which he directed), wherein the actors are so faithfully replicated you keep wondering why didn't they just go with live action instead of this icky, offputting approach.

At any rate, "Monster House" is essentially a teched-up haunted house story about a decrepit wreck of a house squatting ominously on an otherwise sunny suburban street. Things (kites, tricycles) -- and eventually people -- disappear when they get too close. Which may -- or may not -- explain why the crumbling edifice is zealously guarded by a misanthropic geezer named Nebbercracker (voice by Steve Buscemi).

Everybody in the neighborhood figures Nebbercracker is just a cantankerous old man and his house just a poster-child for tear-downs everywhere. Everyone, that is, except DJ (Mitchel Musso), the 12-year-old who lives directly across the street. He knows something is wrong and he enlists his pal Chowder (Sam Lerner), who's a little chubby, a little chicken, and Girl Scout Cookie sales-kid Jenny (Spencer Locke), who pushes her Thin Mints as if she were a miniature Donald Trump, to help prove him right.

The movie perks up about a half hour in, when the aptly named house wakes up. As it turns out, it doesn't shelter monsters; it is the monster (as the trailers have already revealed). So, for a while, the movie kinda works and you think, well, maybe this isn't so bad.

Then comes the final third. It's a nightmare and probably not the sort of nightmare first-time director Gil Kenan intended. The film explodes into the kind of "Please stop!" overdrive that made the conveyor belt chase in the otherwise perfect "Monsters, Inc." look like a Teletubbies outtake. And it gets worse. The Monster House is given a weepy carnival-set back story that teaches kids not to be mean to people who look different because they might turn into MONSTER HOUSES!

Occasionally, a good line pops up (Maggie Gyllenhaal's amusingly Goth-ish babysitter tells DJ, "I don't do board games or tuck-ins"). But for the most part, the talented voice cast -- Buscemi, Kathleen Turner, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Jason Lee -- is wasted. And Jon Heder has really got to shake the Napoleon Dynamite thing. Soon.

Some kids will enjoy "Monster House," though not as much as they did "Cars." But not all kids. I agree with the little girl down the row from me at a preview screening who said, "Mommy, I don't want to be here."