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DokBrowne [ 7.0 ]
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I have to admit, I was a big "Goosebumps" reader in the '90s. I don't think I ever finished reading all 50 something books, but I came close and loved it. Some other critic somewhere wrote that this long-overdue movie adheres less to the R.L. Stine playbook than to that of the current family-movie blockbuster, and it's true, but neither format is particularly clever so I can't imagine the hacky talent fusion of Stine or director Rob Letterman ("Shark Tale", Jack Black's "Gulliver's Travels", enough said) devising anything better than this. Instead of aiming to tell a spooky story of its own in the spirit of the books or adapt one of them (I guess that TV show already covered this ground enough), the movie goes kitchen sink style on cramming as many familiar "Goosebumps" icons as it can into a lazy meta narrative in which R.L. Stine is a character (Jack Black) helping kids who unleashed the monsters from his books.
Only a couple lines toy with fourth-wall breaking (Stine himself passes by in the hallway and is identified by Jack Black as "Mr. Black, the new drama teacher"); mostly it's an episodic chase movie where the gang encounters one beastie after another - werewolf, angry lawn gnomes, a giant praying mantis, abominable snowman - and "hilariously" run away. The mix of wackiness and horror into a light-hearted yet occasionally menacing menagerie does evoke Stine's writing style, so fans shouldn't be too disappointed, and the shallow, half-assed screenplay is pretty much what the book series deserved for an adaptation (much as I enjoyed them, they were hardly quality literature).
But either the movie seems to think that readers/fans are just as superficial as the books themselves or it just doesn't give a damn, because it only offers up half a dozen or so ghoulies, and look, it's not like I'm a hardcore "Goosebumps" guy - I've only seen a few episodes of the show, and haven't thought much about the books over the last 20 years - but if you're going to summon our memories for a reunion extravaganza like this, fucking commit to it fellas. The movie poster includes a pumpkin-head thing but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in the movie at all except possibly in a brief, overstuffed group shot. Even the poster exaggerates the very small amount of critters used. Clearly it wouldn't be easy to make time for 50+ villains in a 90-minute kid's movie, but they could've put more imagination into it than this. Where's the monster blood? I thought those were the most famous tales within the "Goosebumps" saga. The tag-playing bear cub critters? The Martian scrambled eggs? The killer sponge? The time traveling cuckoo clock? The Masked Mutant? The plant-man? Okay, there were some pretty lame concepts in these books, and maybe the movie chose the most palatable and memorable ones. And half the books didn't even have tangible evil forces in them - they were about creepy summer camps and haunted beaches and a kid getting turned into a bee for some reason - but I refuse to believe this movie is as good as anyone could have done with the book series. I mean, sometimes it's like they didn't even read the books - the giant praying mantis is from the cover of "A Shocker on Shock Street", but if I recall, it's just an animatronic prop on a movie set in the book. It's not an actual threat in that story because it wasn't even alive. But in the movie it is! All right.
On the tech front, the fx aren't perfect but it doesn't really matter in a movie like this - they are done pretty well for the most part and young audiences won't care. The R.L. Stine character is rather contrived but Jack Black saves it a little with an amusing mid-Atlantic accent. The kids are fine. There's a decent subplot regarding the girl that shows at least some sign of creativity. Ken Marino and Amy Ryan get nothing fun to do in supporting parts. Jillian Bell from "Workaholics" has some of the only faintly funny lines as the kooky aunt. The climax set at an abandoned circus funhouse promises more than it delivers, and Slappy the mastermind ventriloquist dummy deserved a better showdown.
My 7.0 rating doesn't match up to this mostly nitpicking review, and here's why: this is mediocre on various levels, but if you remove the "Goosebumps" context and will yourself into the mindset of an 11-year-old, it's neat to have a big-budget, competently orchestrated Halloween adventure like this where a bunch of monsters attack a small town and a group of kids have to stop them. It's like this generation's "The Monster Squad"...also kind of a "Monster House" do-over. Those are both way better, but this one has the right attitude and might test higher for people with no prior "Goosebumps" experience
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.7 |
| No. Ratings | : 2 | |
| No. Reviews | : 1 | |
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