Toon Zone Talkback - Monster House

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Ladiee B

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Finally saw this one last night. Didn't get a chance to see it in 3D, but it was surprisingly good. Like others have said, basically a Goonies redux in a way as far as how the kids act. It looks a little better than Polar Express as far as the character design, as they're somewhat exaggerated, but still move pretty realistically as far as facial expressions thanks to the motion capture. And yes, it will make you jump a few times.:eek:
 
Because of the old house that movie make me think back to the old CGI show 'Monster by Mistake' :p

It looks interesting and fun. Plus it's not another one of those 'talking animal' CGI movies *coughBarnyardcough*.
 
Ebert & Roeper are very strongly behind this movie. They reviewed it twice and completely glowed about it both times, calling it the best animated movie of the year and complimenting everything from the humor to the horror to the cinematography. I'm definitely more interested in it now than I was when I first heard about it, due to the oversaturation of CGI movies lately. Apparently it's by a new director, and apparently he's very good.
 
I saw it this afternoon. It was pretty good. Had that nostalgic-for-my-warped-childhood Spielbergian flavor. And the CGI was decent, but...a little bit stiff and unconvincing. Isn't it ironic that human characters are apparently as difficult to animate believeably with a computer as they are with a pencil? In this film, as in "Polar Express", the motion-capture system is effective but the results are still a bit...cold-looking.

Still it was a fun movie. But it was very intense. This is NOT for little kids. When Spielberg called this "Monster House" he wasn't fooling around. I can't imagine what watching this film is like in 3D. I'm not sure I want to...
 
This was a really great movie. I really liked it. I didn't expect to, I just expected it to be critic fodder. But it had a good story and carried it out well. Monster House, Curious George, Cars...this has turned out to be a good year for animated movies.
 
I just saw the movie and I liked it very much. In fact I would like to see a series made of the 3 kids that were in themovie. It might not be to bad.;)
 
I'm convinced that the Zemeckis/Spielburg thing is a ruse, and in fact the movie is the result of one time when Tim Burton got high, summoned the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock, and still high, made a CGI film.

I liked it.
 
I work at a movie theater and I am far too tired to go see films that often anymore, hehe.

I have seen about 10 minutes of it, and while the motion capture is meh, the humor and jokes are quite good.
 
Character, humour and story aside, it looks pretty bad. The CGI looks very rigid, and all the humans heads don't line up with their bodies... >_>

I doubt I'll see it until it hits DVD, though. It still doesn't appeal to me at all. ^^()
 
I don't want to say that I'm disappointed that there's no review of this movie on the front page, but I will anyway.

This is certainly one of the better CG features I've seen in a while (call me crazy, but I can't believe it's the same technique that birthed The Polar Express; the character designs are much cartoonier, here). The voice cast was very good and I really liked the music by newcomer Douglas Pipes.
 
So it turns out I agree completely with Ebert & Roeper. This is a great movie and it deserves to be seen in theaters and then treasured on video for years to come.

It's really a classic PG movie, like they used to make in the early '90s. It's about on the level of Honey I Shrunk the Kids (though actually probably a bit more sophisticated). This is a perfect movie for the 10-year-old crowd, assuming the damage done to them by modern kids' programming is still reversible. It doesn't insult kids' intelligence with tons of bathroom humor (and the bathroom humor that is there is just quirky enough) or characters who do nothing more than crack wise and scream at stuff. And they also don't insult adults' intelligence with jokes that say "Are you bored? Here's a joke for you that'll go over the kids' heads!" There are some jokes relating to sexuality and other "mature themes", but they're the kind of jokes that a kid would come up with. It really just radiates with childlike creativity.

The characters are likeable and smart, the story is unique (and relatively free of plot holes, or at least immune to them), and it's all told really well with good pacing and general respect for the story and characters.


So what's the flaw? The animation. It's not really a distraction, and it really doesn't detract from the movie much. But if you have an eye for animation (and most of us do), you'll probably be disheartened by some of the stop-motion technique. It almost seems to have a point in some parts, and it's really not a very "cartoony" animated movie, but I'm almost positive I would've preferred that they did the animation completely by hand. Quite a few of the character movements have a weird jerkiness to them. I think it's been proven time and time again that replicating human motions by hand is more successful, convincing, and flexible than motion-capture. (I think back to 3D wrestling video games -- the first ones used true motion-capture, but they ditched it in the later ones and it did look better). However, because the characters are stylized instead of being as realistic as possible, it doesn't look as creepy as it did in The Polar Express.
It's something that can be overlooked, and you'll probably be able to forgive it, just as you can forgive the animation problems of a low-budget stop-motion film. I do strongly encourage that they ditch this technique, though.


Overall, I definitely recommend this movie. It's a PG classic. And it's the kind of animated movie I've been waiting to see: a NON-comedy family film. It has funny parts, but this isn't trying to be the next Shrek. It's about time.
 
I just saw the movie today and loved it. The animation was fantastic and oh the humor I laughed so hard threw the entire thing. I loved all the characters and would love a spin off series with the three main characters as the stars. It was just awesome, it gets a 10/10 from me :)
 
I just saw this in 3D and it was well worth the extra two bucks. I really enjoyed almost everything about this movie. I agree that it sort of has a Tim Burton feel to it. Or more like a cross between the Goonies and any Tim Burton movie. The story, characters, voice acting, score, ect. more than make up for the quirks in the animation. It is a really enjoyable film and well worth it in 3D. (I also got to see a 3D preview for Nightmare Before Christmas and an upcoming Disney movie I forgot the name of.)
 
I notice a lot of reviews that indicate to me that adults these days just don't get it. Adults in the media, at least. They're overprotective, overthinking, and have forgotten what it's like to be a child. Even many positive reviews of Monster House try to say that it's not a kids' movie, or that it includes genuinely scary stuff primarily as a way to appeal to adults. And there are even reviews that criticize the film as being too scary. My question is, what kind of movies did these people watch when they were in elementary school? Did they seriously just watch Disney stuff? And what kind of books did they read?

Make no mistake: Monster House is not Titan A.E. or Shrek or one of the animated Batman movies. It doesn't have "adult" humor and it isn't truly dark or gritty. It is defiinitely a kids' movie. Not a toddlers' movie, but a kids' movie. Unfortunately, a lot of people these days just don't give kids enough credit. Scott Bowles of USA Today said it well: "The movie treats children with respect. Monster's pre-teens are sarcastic, think they're smarter than their parents and are going crazy over the opposite sex." These characters are real kids. They know what death is, they know what beer is, and they're on the verge of knowing what sex is. It's a safe bet that they're the only protagonists in recent kids' movie history who know the truth about Santa Claus.

Oh, and it's also not a comedy. I saw one review that criticized it for not maintaining a comedic tone throughout the movie. Why did they expect one? Just because it's a CGI movie?
 
I'm wondering how Zemeckis' Beowulf is going to look come next summer. It's supposed to employ the same technique as Polar Express and Monster House, but he wants it to look like a living Frank Frazetta painting. :eek:
 
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