Friday, July 21, 2006

Monster House (***1/2)


This funny, quirky Halloween-themed cartoon has characters that are more three-dimensional than most live-action movies.

Part coming-of-age drama, part comedy-mystery, and part (mild) horror movie, this is the tale of a trio of tweens who discover a sinister secret about the place across the street. There are a number of time-honored elements to the story. A mean guy (voiced by Steve Buscemi) who doesn’t want anyone on his lawn. Strange happening that only the kids notice, so the adults don’t believe them. The main characters are sharply drawn, literally and figuratively. The script is quirky enough to have the two boys do things like pee in a jar to avoid having to stray from their telescope they’re using to spy. Even though they compete for the attention of the girl, they sometimes forget to act like grownups around her. They disagree about whether they’re too old to celebrate Halloween, but have to worry that the younger kids won’t make it to November alive. This is the year’s best animated feature so far.

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