Monster House - Palm Beach Post movie review

'Monster House': Better-than-average animated treat

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

There's a better-than-average animated Halloween treat that, unfortunately, is being released this weekend, while youngsters are still up to their eyeballs in pirates, race cars and Garfield. Still, write down Monster House, even if it just to remember to rent it when it gets to DVD.

Recent UCLA film school graduate Gil Kenan and a team of screenwriters catch the right blend of kid-friendly scares with an adult level of humor in this new take on the suburban myth of the unkempt, haunted tract house.

Sony Pictures

'Monster House'

B+

The verdict: The right blend of kid-friendly scares and adult-level humor.

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

No, not that there are ghosts inside, but the house itself is eager to capture and eat any children that come too close.

Home-alone boy DJ (voiced by Mitchel Musso); his pudgy, not-too-bright pal Chowder (Sam Lerner); and their new know-it-all friend Jenny (Spencer Locke) battle the house, which threatens to eat them with its tongue-like hallway carpet and jagged wooden teeth.

Kenan gives it a fantasy realism with a stylized version of the motion-capture technique that producer Robert Zemeckis used on The Polar Express.