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Monster House (film)
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Wikipedia article
'Monster House' is a 2006 American computer-animated haunted house film directed by Gil Kenan in his directorial debut and written by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler, about a neighborhood being terrorized by a sentient haunted house during Halloween. The film features the voices of Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jason Lee, Fred Willard, Jon Heder, Catherine O'Hara, and Kathleen Turner, as well as human characters being animated using live action motion capture animation, which was previously used in 'The Polar Express' (2004). It was Sony's first computer animated film produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Produced by Robert Zemeckis' , Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment (marking their first theatrically-released fully animated film since 'Balto') and Relativity Media (their first animated film), the film was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures on July 21, 2006. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $142 million worldwide against a $75 million budget. 'Monster House' received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to 'Happy Feet'.
Plot
On October 30, 1983 in Mayville, Wisconsin, the parents of 12-year-old D.J. Walters go to a dentist convention for the weekend, leaving him in the care of babysitter Zee. D.J. has been spying on his elderly neighbor, Horace Nebbercracker, who scares away children from his front yard and confiscates their belongings. After D.J.'s best friend, Chowder, misplaces his basketball on Nebbercracker's lawn, D.J. is caught attempting to retrieve it and the enraged Nebbercracker appears to suffer a heart attack from overexerting himself and is taken away by an ambulance. He is presumed dead by D.J. who holds himself responsible. That night, D.J. gets phone calls from the house with no one on the other end.
Zee's drunk boyfriend, Bones, comes over for the night and reveals that as a child, Nebbercracker stole his kite and was allegedly rumored to have eaten his wife. After Zee throws him out, he sees his lost kite in the house's front door, but is abducted by the house while attempting to retrieve it. D.J. and Chowder investigate but retreat when the house comes alive and attacks them. The next morning, schoolgirl Jenny Bennett sells Halloween candy and goes to the house; D.J. and Chowder save her before she gets eaten. Jenny calls police officers Landers and Lister, who do not believe the trio because the house is inactive when adults are present.
The trio consults supernatural expert Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, learning that the house is a rare monster created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure, and can only be killed by destroying its heart. Concluding that Nebbercracker's spirit was responsible and that the heart must be its furnace, they create and bring a dummy containing cold medicine from a pharmacy owned by Chowder's father. Before the dummy reaches the house however, Landers and Lister thwart their plan and arrest them after Landers discovers the stolen medicine. Before they can leave, the house devours everyone and the police vehicle.
After the house falls asleep, the three begin exploring it. In the basement, they find a shrine containing the cement-encased skeleton of Nebbercracker's late wife, Constance the Giantess. The house attacks them, though they force it to vomit them outside by grabbing its uvula. Nebbercracker returns alive and well, revealing that the house is actually possessed by Constance's spirit. As a young man, he met Constance, then an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her. After helping her escape, they were married and he bought a piece of land to construct a house. One Halloween, two children tormented Constance for her size. Constance became enraged and attempted to chase off the children with an axe; when Nebbercracker attempted to stop her, she accidentally tripped and fell to her death in the unfinished basement of the house, in the process inadvertently activating a cement mixer that buried her body. After Nebbercracker finished the house, Constance's vengeful spirit possessed it, forcing him to scare children away for their safety.
D.J. convinces Nebbercracker to let Constance go, enraging her. Constance uses a pair of trees as limbs and breaks free from the foundation. Constance chases after the group, and corners them near the construction site. Nebbercracker tries to comfort Constance and tells her realizing the trouble she has caused. Nebbercracker attempts to destroy the house with some dynamite, and it attempts to kill him.
Chowder intervenes using an excavator from the construction site and Nebbercracker gives D.J. the dynamite. Both Jenny, and D.J. fall into the yard, and they tell Chowder to get Constance in it. Chowder lures the house into the field puncturing, and striking the house with the Excavator. Constance slips down the hill, and collapses in the process. Their victory is short lived though when she uses the houses remaining parts to chase Chowder, and disables the excavator. D.J. ascends the nearby crane and, with Jenny's help, manages to throw the dynamite into the house's chimney, destroying it and releasing Constance's ghost, who the trio see dancing with Nebbercracker before fading away. D.J. apologizes to Nebbercracker for his losses but Nebbercracker thanks the trio for freeing him and Constance from being trapped in the house for 45 years. That night, the children Nebbercracker drove away line up at the former site of the house, where the group returns everything confiscated by Nebbercracker. D.J. and Chowder go trick-or-treating, which they initially felt they were too old for.
During the credits, those who were eaten by the house emerge from the basement. Bones finds that Zee is now dating Skull, Officer Landers and Officer Lister leave to "investigate" some of the trick-or-treating candy, and a dog urinates on a nearby jack-o'-lantern enough to extinguish its flame.
Cast
, Spencer Locke and Mitchel Musso at the 34th Annie Awards.
* Mitchel Musso as Dustin James "D.J." Walters
* Sam Lerner as Charles "Chowder"
* Spencer Locke as Jennifer "Jenny" Bennett
* Steve Buscemi as Horace Nebbercracker, Constance's husband
* Maggie Gyllenhaal as Elizabeth "Zee"
* Kevin James as Police Officer Landers
* Nick Cannon as Police Officer Lister
* Jon Heder as Reginald "Skull" Skulinski
* Jason Lee as Bones
* Catherine O'Hara as Mrs. Walters (credited as "Mom"), D.J.'s mother
* Fred Willard as Mr. Walters (credited as "Dad"), D.J.'s father
* Kathleen Turner as Constance "the Giantess" Nebbercracker, Nebbercracker's wife
Production
The film was initially set up at DreamWorks Animation, based on a pitch by newcomer Gil Kenan. Having just finished film school recently, Kenan had been having several meetings with film producers for a while, but he hadn't found any success, with a screenplay based on the 'Pac-Man' video game series going unproduced. After Kenan received Dan Harmon's and Rob Schrab's 'Monster House' screenplay for , Kenan had a meeting with the head of story Bennett Schneir, where he was able to pitch his vision for the film. Schneir worked for Robert Zemeckis as the head of development at ImageMovers, and Kenan had a meeting with Zemeckis quickly thereafter, apparently due to the filmmakers wanting to get a director for the project as fast as they could. Upon impressing Zemeckis with his pitch, Kenan then had a meeting with Steven Spielberg, meeting during which he pitched the film to Spielberg in a presentation with some sketches and drawings he had drawn before meeting Zemeckis. By 2004, the studio put the film in turnaround, to which Sony Pictures picked up the project and began production on August 23 of that year.
The original screenplay of 'Monster House' was, in Kenan's words, "absolutely brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny". Due to his experience as a storyteller, Kenan decided to preserve all the characters and the tone from Harmon's and Schrab's story, but added the idea that the titular house was possessed by a soul, leading to the creation of Constance Nebbercracker and the house's backstory. To help him revise the script and introduce Constance and Horace Nebbercracker into the plot, Kenan brought Pamela Pettler after reading her script for 'Corpse Bride' (2005). They worked on the script at her house, and to meet the established deadline, they finished a draft quickly and sent it to Amy Pascal at Columbia Pictures. As work in the screenplay was underway, in a few months of preparation, Kenan had assembled a team of storyboard artists led by Simeon Wilkins in Studio City, Los Angeles to put up rudimentary boards with scratch dialogue and temporal score, with Khang Lee and Chris Appelhans collaborating on paintings for the film.
The film was shot using performance capture, in which the actors performed the characters' movement and lines while linked to sensors, a process pioneered by Zemeckis for his film 'The Polar Express' (2004). Zemeckis was in the process of starting filming 'The Polar Express' when he met Kenan, who visited the set to see how that film was filmed and discussed with Kenan how they would exactly shoot 'Monster House', deciding that they prioritize the story before the filming technology, though Kenan always felt that the story should use animation to create a world with a living house, as he opined that making the house a viable threat and character would better work in an animated setting.
The casting for 'Monster House' was a laborious process, especially for the lead trio, who were portrayed by Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke. Kenan agreed with head of animation Troy Saliba that actors should be needed to portray the roles in a believable way. Many of the film's artists interpreted the roles on set and enhanced the lead actors through posed animation that drove the exaggerations of their performances to make them feel subtle and real.
Ed Verreaux served as the production designer of 'Monster House'. To design the neighbourhood where the story takes place, Verreaux realized that the film's setting needed to resemble that of 1980s films, like 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' (1982). During his discussions with Harmon and Schrab, Kenan was told that the film's setting was inspired by that of Wisconsin and Minneapolis. Verreaux and Kenan went together on a scouting trip to design the film's locations, which involved a visit to Universal Studios' backlot, during which they were granted access to the suburban street of 'The 'Burbs' (1989), the neighborhood of the show 'Desperate Housewives' and the house of 'Psycho' (1960).
'Monster House' was the first animated feature film using the Arnold rendering software (co-developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks), and the first feature film entirely rendered with unbiased, brute-force path tracing.
Years after the movie came out, Harmon received a letter from an upset 7-year-old who was displeased with the film. Harmon wrote back that he did not finish the script when the studio took it and hired other writers to change it. He further denounced it by stating that Kenan was a hack and called Spielberg a moron.
Digital 3-D version
As with 'The Polar Express', a stereoscopic 3-D version of the film was created and had a limited special release in digital 3-D stereo along with the "flat" version. While 'The Polar Express' was produced for the 3-D IMAX 70mm giant film format, 'Monster House' was released in approximately 200 theaters equipped for new REAL D Cinema digital 3-D stereoscopic projection. The process was not based on film, but was purely digital. Since the original source material was "built" in virtual 3-D, it created a very rich stereoscopic environment. For the film's release, the studio nicknamed it 'Imageworks 3D'.For more info on the 3D technology used for 'Sony ImageWorks Monster House', visit: www.reald.com
Reception
Critical response
Review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 75% approval rating, based on 162 reviews with an average rating of 6.83/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "'Monster House' welcoms kids and adults alike into a household full of smart, monstrous fun." On Metacritic the film has a score of 68 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[https://www.metacritic.com/movie/monster-house Monster House - Metacritic] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.Roger Ebert gave the film his highest ranking of four stars calling it "one of the most original and exciting animated movies I've seen in a long time" and compared it to the work of Tim Burton. Ian Freer of 'Empire' gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, stating "A kind of 'Goonies' for the Noughties, 'Monster House' is a visually dazzling thrill ride that scales greater heights through its winning characters and poignantly etched emotions. A scary, sharp, funny movie, this is the best kids flick of the year so far." Jane Boursaw of Common Sense Media also gave it 4 stars out of 5, saying "This is one of those movies where all the planets align: a top-notch crew (director Gil Kenan; executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis), memorable voices that fit the characters perfectly; and a great story, ingenious backstory, and twisty-turny ending." Roger Moore of the 'Orlando Sentinel' also gave the film four stars out of five, saying "This 'Monster House' is a real fun house. It's a 3-D animated kids' film built on classic gothic horror lines, a jokey, spooky 'Goonies' for the new millennium." Scott Bowles of 'USA Today' gave the film a positive review, saying that "The movie treats children with respect. 'Monster' pre-teens are sarcastic, think they're smarter than their parents and are going crazy over the opposite sex". Amy Biancolli of the 'Houston Chronicle' wrote, "It's engineered to scare your pants off, split your sides and squeeze your tear ducts into submission." Michael Medved called it "ingenious" and "slick, clever [and] funny" while also cautioning parents about letting small children see it due to its scary and intense nature, adding that a "PG-13 rating would have been more appropriate than its PG rating."[http://www.michaelmedved.com/pg/jsp/eot/home.jsp Michael Medved: Movie Minute] A. O. Scott of 'The New York Times' commented, "One of the spooky archetypes of childhood imaginationthe dark, mysterious house across the streetis literally brought to life in "Monster House," a marvelously creepy animated feature directed by Gil Kenan."
However, the film was not without its detractors. Frank Lovece of 'Film Journal International' praised director Gil Kenan as "a talent to watch" but berated the "internal logic [that] keeps changing.... D.J.'s parents are away, and the house doesn't turn monstrous in front of his teenage babysitter, Zee. But it does turn monstrous in front of her boyfriend, Bones. It doesn't turn monstrous in front of the town's two cops until, in another scene, it does."[http://filmjournal.com/filmjournal/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002877008 Monster House] In a dismissive review, Todd McCarthy of 'Variety' wrote: "Alert 'Harry Potter' fans will notice the script shamelessly lifts the prime personality traits of J. K. Rowling's three most important young characters for its lead trio: Tall, dark-haired, serious-minded DJ is Harry, semi-dufus Chowder is Ron and their new cohort, smarty-pants prep school redhead Jenny (Spencer Locke), is Hermione.... it is a theme-park ride, with shocks and jolts provided with reliable regularity. Across 90 minutes, however, the experience is desensitizing and dispiriting and far too insistent."
Box office
'Monster House' opened theatrically on July 21, 2006, alongside 'Clerks II', 'Lady in the Water' and 'My Super Ex-Girlfriend', and grossed $22.2 million in its opening weekend, ranking number two at the North American box office behind 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'. The film ended its theatrical run on October 22, 2006, having grossed $73.7 million in North America and $68.2 million overseas for a worldwide total of $141.9 million against a production budget of $75 million.Awards and nominations
In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Animation Films list.
Video game
A video game based on the film was released by THQ on July 18, 2006 for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.
References
* Columbia Pictures press release titled "'Monster House': July 21, 2006" (offline)
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