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PLOT: In an animated movie created by motion capture, three kids explore a creepy neighbourhood house they believe may be possessed by an evil spirit.
There's one thing wrong with the bricks & mortar villain in Monster House: It's alive!
But there are a lot of things right with Monster House as an animated movie: It's fun, funny, smart and even scary -- in that surreal, Gothic-style way that the old Universal horror movies such as Frankenstein were frightening.
Monster House is also a hot summer treat because it appeals to both adults and children in equal measure: Adults because there are serious, intelligent themes at the core of the story; children because the heroes are pre-teens, the humour is goofy and the action is bold.
Just as critically, the story is strong, although it would be a spoiler to tell too much in advance. Suffice it to say that it revolves around the neighbourhood adventures of three children (acted and voiced by Mitchel Musso as D.J., Sam Lerner as Chowder and Spencer Locke as Jenny, the wiseacre girl whom both boys drool over).
There are plenty of key older characters (Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine O'Hara, Jason Lee, Kathleen Turner and Jon Heder, among others).
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The kids get involved with a house that appears to be possessed by a malevolent spirit that swallows up toys and threatens to do the same with human trespassers.
As animation, Monster House looks a lot like the Toy Story flicks, in part because kids are involved, in part because toys play their role, too. But it is very different in both technique and content.
The new movie was created through motion capture, with actors performing as the characters in a stark, bare studio. Their performances were then digitally manipulated and placed inside a fictional landscape by computer artists. That makes it more like The Polar Express, which was directed by Robert Zemeckis, and who happens to be the co-executive producer here with his pal Steven Spielberg.
The technique is not the point of the film. But Kenan and his team use this burgeoning animation technique masterfully. It allows them to create a heightened, surreal and even fantastical setting for the story.
In content, the beauty of the piece is the layering of themes. For example, for adults only, the tragedy that created the monster house is astonishingly dark, complicated and serious. Even for an adult animation.
Yet kids who do not fully understand that dark core will still breeze through the rest of the movie. Kenan keeps the right balance of light and dark, of comedy and drama, offering up the dark underbelly when he wants to but never letting it flip the film over.
In that sense, it invokes the tonal quality of The Triplets Of Belleville. And both these films reaffirm what Japanese anime artists already know: That feature animation is not just a long cartoon for kids.
Monster House is not a perfect film. For my taste, the action spectacle goes a little overboard near the end. But that is just a quibble, not a major concern. Taken as a whole, Monster House is scary fun for the family.
BOTTOM LINE: Kids of all ages should enjoy this summer romp, if they like their horror comedy intelligent in content and delivered with a dark, even menacing tone.
(This film is rated PG)