Just got this report in from a test screening of MOUSEHUNT, and it taint good. Sounds like kids enjoyed it though!!! Now remember this is just one guy's opinion. What do the rest of ya think?
I saw a test screening of the Dreamworks xmas release "Mousehunt" and in a word, it sucked. It's basically The Money Pit/Home Alone with a mouse and Nathan Lane. I hear it was the feature directorial debut by the guy who did the "Budweiser frogs" commercials. Yikes! I can't give away the story since I couldn't even sit though all of this wretched piece of brainless goo. Something like bickering brothers inherit big old valuable house and proceed to wreck it while trying to capture a single mouse. It is inexplicably set in some dreary alterna-present a-la Brazil, though much more Gothically low key (and uninteresting).
The part-Stan Winston, part CG mouse provided the only semi-interesting scenes in this lavishly over-designed, but (unexplainably) darkly photographed mess. This movie is strangely restrained and has a visual pall over it so dark that it would give John Hurts' 1984 a run for it's money. Now juxtapose that bleakness with Nathan Lane riding out the front door and out onto a frozen lake in a bathtub he was carrying up some stairs and you get the picture. Oh, the side aches! To be fair, a large number of mostly 8 to 14 year old kids laughed at all the sight gags, but who wouldn't laugh at characters mugging slack-jawed at the camera after getting splattered by an exploding vacuum cleaner full of shit? Now THAT'S funny! I don't know if such a wreck can be saved before it's release, but with it's mystifying production design, unappealing characters, WB sitcom hijinks, recycled non-story and ultra-DREARY tone, Dreamworks probably has a break-out hit on it's hands!
Cigar-smoking man
