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Home Theater of the Week
Theater of the Week for December 4, 2010
Post Date: 12/4/2010
This is a very nice home theater, even though, after staring at it for ten minutes, I still can't figure out what that thing on the ceiling is.
Movie Review
Monster House (2006)
Starring: Ryan Newman, Steve Buscemi, Mitchel Musso, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, Sam Lerner, Woody Schultz, Ian McConnel, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Lee, Spencer Locke, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jon Heder, Kathleen Turner
Directed by: Gil Kenan
MPAA Rating: PG
Reviewed on 5/19/2011
I remember this movie coming out in 2006, but never got around to seeing it, with or without the kids. A co-worker had brought the DVD from home and had lent it to another co-worker, so I thought to give it a try. The kids, seeing the movie in its case, had been asking for a couple of weeks for us to watch it together. Finally, one night last week when we had some time, we sat down to watch it.
The animation was quite rough, at least by today's standards, but the character voices all did a good job and helped make up for it. At the beginning of the movie, we wondered whether we made a mistake about letting our kids watch it. We even stopped at one point and considered not finishing it, but the kids (for the most part) wanted to continue. It was pretty scary right at the first, and there were scary parts all through it, but the kids by and large did OK with it. We were a little bit worried about the kids having nightmares, especially after our Neverending Story experience, but I'm pleased to say that we've had no reports of any bad dreams.
The story follows a pretty typical (or so my wife tells me, who has more experience than I do with this genre) horror story pattern, obviously without any blood or gore. In the end, the explanation of how the Monster House was created was very weird, but I thought overall that it was a pretty decent scary movie to watch with the kids.
