MOUSE HUNT Review by Luke Buckmaster (bucky@alphalink.com.au)
>From 0 stars to 5 stars: 4 stars
Here's a riddle: what do you get when two slow-witted men attempt to invade a house manned by a solitary young boy? The answer, of course, is Home Alone. All you need to do now is substitute the "young boy" for "mouse," and you'll have a fairly good idea of what Mouse Hunt is all about.
However, their is one major difference that separates the two films from being distinctly alike: whilst the young lad in Home Alone set traps for goofy villains, the mouse in Mouse Hunt simply avoids the ones set by the invading men until they are stupid enough to fall for them themselves. This alone proves to be more amusing and much more enticing than Home Alone's formula, and the same sort of physical comedy is presented in an artistic and entertaining way that's bound to appeal to both young and old.
It's the story of two greedy brothers. Ernie Smuntz (Nathan Lane) is a professional chef who owns a high-class restaurant, and Lars Smuntz (Lee Evans) works along side his father Rudolf Smuntz (William Hickey) in the family string factory. So when Rudolf dies, his string factory and an apparently abandoned old mansion is left at the brothers' dispense. They quickly ride off their new assets as worthless, and quickly stumble into financial crisis. Eventually, they discover that the old house was in fact designed by a famous international architect and is worth millions. All they need to do to cash in is renovate the house. There's just one problem: there's a mouse in the house.
Yes, this problem is more than laughable - but in no time Ernie and Lars realize how serious the situation is and their money making scheme is now in jeopardy. This is when the real fun begins…
Just as is expected from such a film, the two greedy brothers go to absolute extremes to ensure that they do everything but kill the mouse. In fact not only do they fail to succeed on all accounts, but they also make themselves look like money seeking morons; and as their traps get progressively more outrageous their hatred for this hairy critter grows and grows. But of course when they finally get the little rodent in their hands, killing it seems to be a far too easy option…
It is with a subtle cleverness and ingenious cartoony atmosphere that unknown director Gore Verbinski has created in Mouse Hunt's zany characters and their hilarious physical and intellectual comedy. It's definitely not your average kid's comedy; and if the advertising previews are any incentive for you to give this one a miss then I suggest you ignore them, run to your local cinema and let Mouse Hunt refresh your idea of what an excellent family film really is.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews