It was difficult to guess what "Monster House" would bring to the big screen.
Could it skate the line between childish humor and enjoyable for adults, like the old animated "Scooby-Doo" episodes?
Should it feed off some of the same innocent charm from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"?
Would it be too scary for kindergartners?
Unfortunately, the answer is "no" to all of these questions. The film just wasn't engaging, enchanting or elegant.
Most of the children in the film were so bratty and ill-tempered that it would have been more fun if they all had been eaten by the "Monster House." All of these kids are living a posh suburban lifestyle.
Torture by an evil, human-eating house could have given these crumb-crunchers a bit of street cred or a least knocked the ill-mannered, immature nature right out of them.
There was one blond-haired, pig-tailed girl at the beginning of the film with a bit of sassy flair, but she's only in one scene at the beginning and one at the end.
The shining moment of the whole film is right at the start when she sings a great random "La, la, la, la" song at the top of her lungs on her tricycle.
From there on out, you're better off pulling out your old Legos and building a fort to obscure your view of the screen because this film is not quality kid entertainment.
Instead, the audience is served very ordinary dialogue and a terribly unbelievable chain of events.
It's understandable to make a children's film somewhat fantastical and not exactly logical, but "Monster House" attempts to wrap up all of these mysteries about the house with some scatterbrained flashbacks that don't piece together properly.
Things always seemed to make sense after the gang from "Scooby-Doo" figured out a ridiculous conundrum, but that's not the case in this film, which is really a downer.
Part of the allure of a mystery for the viewer is attempting to put together all of the clues before the characters do. "Monster House" is so off-the-wall and crazy with all the clues that the kids probably didn't understand what happened at the end.
The illogical ending would have been easier to swallow if the film was actually funny, but alas, it wasn't. In a movie theater full of kindergarten-aged kids there were no outbursts of laughter — only outbreaks of plot confusion.
The fact that the film was computer-animated was pointless. Plus it seemed like the only reason this film was computer-animated was so big stars like Steve Buscemi ("The Big Lebowski") and Fred Willard ("Waiting for Guffman") didn't have to do any actual acting, but rather just record their voices.
Not only did the computer animation add nothing to the film, but also it seemed to trump the writing.
Other than the little girl singing "La, la, la, la," the only other highlights were the extreme close-ups that seemed to start about a mile away.
As cool as these rapid camera shots were, it's really sad that they were more exciting than the dialogue.
What's happening to movies these days? Why doesn't anyone care about dialogue anymore? Why is cutting-edge technology more important than quality writing? What is the world coming to?
"Monster House" just leaves the viewer with more questions than answers, and they're just not funny questions to ask.
Do yourself a favor and rent a "Peanuts" episode — forget that this movie ever came out.
