Cast: Jack Black is R.L. Stine and several character voices. That sentence alone tells you all you need to know about the movie. Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush (also from last year's The Giver), Ryan Lee (Trophy Wife) are the obligatory kids. Jillian Bell tries to be comic relief. Amy Ryan shows up in the first movie I watched this weekend. Ken Marino is around just long enough for me to wonder if they cut out a bunch of scenes with him.
Plot: Zach (Minnette) moves with his mom (Ryan) to a small town in Delaware. He falls for the girl next door (Rush), but her overprotective father, R.L. Stine (Black) it turns out, refuses to let him see her. One night, Zach sneak into the girl's (Hannah) house and accidentally unlocks the original Goosebumps manuscripts which causes the creatures in the books to come to life, terrorizing the town. Zach, Hannah, Zach's friend Champ (Lee), and Stine have to get all the creatures back into the books.
Thoughts:
At its heart, this is a not-too-scary Children's movie. It replicates Jumanji in a way that Zathura never could. The story goes through many, many painful narrative contortions to get to the creatures escaping from the books, making the first third of the movie an absolute slog. Once Slappy the Dummy, the Werewolf of Fever Swamp, the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena, the Blob that ate everyone and all the others get loose it's a lot of fun.
The main appeal for someone over the age of 12 is the nostalgia factor. The movie does right by that, throwing in all kinds of references to the books. Granted, I haven't read any of the books in 15 years, so I didn't pick up on even half of those references.
Jack Black is having fun with this, getting to play silly and serious. There's even a call-back to director Rob Letterman's last Jack Black movie, Gulliver's Travels which was all in good fun. The kids are different levels of good. Odeya Rush proved she can play a sarcastic Manic Pixie Dream Girl for the next couple decades without a problem. Ryan Lee gives a flop-sweaty performance as the funny best friend. He's a funny kid though. I'm assuming a lot of the problematic parts of the character are on the page, not his fault. Right now, Dylan Minnette is pretty bland. That's about it for now. Amy Ryan is completely wasted, which I expected, given tha target audience. Jillian Bell fell flat completely. She's supposed to be comic relief, and based on the theater I was in, the audience was not having it.
Elephant in the Room: Why is this movie coming out now? 20 years ago - brief pause to contemplate how old I feel saying that - this movie would've been a hit, potentially a phenomenon. Even 10 years ago it would've been pretty familiar and gotten the coveted teen audience at the height of its power. Now, not so much. I believe the Goosebumps series is still pretty popular but nowhere near what it was in the 90s.
To Sum Things Up:
This is an okay movie. It's an example of working too hard to work in a brand. Once it gets going, it's quite fun.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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