DVD Movie Review: Monster House

We rented the movie, Monster House, from Netflix because the previews made it seem like it would be funny. I watched Monster House with my adult daughter and neither one of us liked it. I felt that the movie was completely unsuitable for children and my adult daughter felt that it was too scary for younger children.

In the end, we did not let my grandchildren watch Monster House. They are ages 9, 6, and 3 years old and we won't be letting them watch it anytime soon either. It seems to be a movie for older kids and for adults. Yes, it is an animated movie but the storyline is very creepy with adult messages.

There is a boy, DJ, who lives across the street from a creepy old house where a creepy old man lives. The old man freaks out and runs screaming and chasing anyone who comes onto his lawn. One day, DJ goes onto the lawn to get his friends ball that had rolled over onto it and the old man runs out screaming and attacks him, then suddenly falls down, apparently dead.

The ambulance comes and takes the old man away and the boy, DJ feels terrible. He thinks that it's his fault that he has killed the old man. But then strange things begin happening in the house where the old man had lived. The chimney starts smoking and there seems to be an eerie groaning and some movement around the house. DJ is very upset by this and then he gets a phone call, apparently from the house itself. He does star 69 and the house answers [sort of]. Then DJ sees a dog get eaten by the house.

We, the audience, get to see the house trick a mean person into the house where he is eaten too. Then a "Girl Scout" type girl starts to go to the scary monster house and DJ and his friend, Chowder, run screaming after her to "Stop, Stop, Get away from that house!" They almost aren't in time to save her and then the house tries to eat all of them but they somehow manage to get away.

The three kids then try to convince the police that the house is alive and that it eats people and dogs. Not surprisingly, the police are skeptical but they visit the house anyway to check it out. The police are eaten by the house and somehow the three kids (DJ, Chowder and the Girl Scout type) get trapped inside. While trying to find a way out of the house, they discover pictures of a very fat woman who had been the old man's wife and then they find her skeleton in the basement under cement.

The house becomes very angry that the kids are inside of it and it tries all kinds of tricks to eat them. Somehow the kids come up with the idea to hit the houses' uvula (that thing that hangs in your mouth at the back of your throat, guess houses have them too!) and the house barfs them out onto the front lawn.

Then suddenly here comes the old man back from the hospital, apparently he is not dead. He is yelling and freaking out and the kids tell him that they know about the house and his wife. And it comes out that all these years, the old man was trying to protect everyone from the spirit of his fat crazy dead wife by scaring them away from her house. She was literally his house-wife.

The exciting ending of the movie is where the house comes completely alive and uses the trees as arms and crawls down the street chasing the old man and the three kids to eat them because they are trying to destroy "her."

Somehow the crazy house explodes and the crazy fat lady and the old man are set free from whatever was keeping them prisoner. The old man is still alive though but his crazy fat wife's spirit is freed from the house and her ghost smiles as she poofs away.

There were several things about this movie that bothered me. First, I thought that it didn't appear to have a plot until close to the end. And even after the house exploded and the crazy wife's spirit was freed, I wasn't sure exactly why she and the old man were trapped like they had been for so many years.

Second, I found some things about the movie to be majorly offensive and not funny as the writers may have intended. The use of negative stereotypes in the movie really bothered me and basically ruined the movie for me. The crazy fat circus lady was kept in a cage until the old man came along and took her away but she was too crazy from the abuse heaped upon her through the years as a fat "freak" in the circus sideshow to be able to survive in the real world, which is why she died. Even stretching my imagination to its limits, I just can't see anything funny about the situation at all.

Third, there was the stereotypical fat, donut-eating redneck policeman who wasn't too smart and his rookie partner, the skinny black man with a big head who also seemed not too smart either. The "star" of the movie, the dorky kid, DJ seemed way too nerdy and geeky and just plain weird and mentally challenged as he spied on the neighbors all the time. Then DJ's best friend, Chowder, was a fat kid who was afraid of everything and didn't want to do anything physical. The goth babysitter and her drinking druggy boyfriend were also the stereotyped.

The negative stereotypes for fat people, rednecks, African Americans, goths, drug abusers, and crazy old men abound in the movie Monster House.

And lastly, I felt that parts of the movie were very scary, especially when the three kids were trapped in the spooky old house that kept trying to eat them. This movie is rated PG but I think it should be rated at least PG13 because I don't believe anyone under 13 should see it. It's just too scary and creepy for little kids.

It is my opinion that animated or not, this movie is intended for adults because of how scary it is and because of the adult situations. Here is a quote from the movie "Calm down! You make me wanna throw up in some tin foil and eat it!" I didn't find the statement, which was made by a kid, to be a either funny or appropriate for kids.

I can't recommend this movie, Monster House, because I didn't like it. It was a mean house and a mean movie. I couldn't find anything to feel good about in the movie or to really laugh about in it either. I don't consider Monster House to be either a comedy or a kid's movie. Instead, I see the movie as being an animated version of an adult horror film. I know there are many people who like that type of movie but I am not one of them. If you are looking for a family oriented movie with positive values and a positive message, then you may want to pass on watching the movie, Monster House.

Monster House
2006, Sony Pictures DVD, 91 minutes.
Actors who voiced the movie are Ryan Newman III, Steve Buscemi, Mitchel Musso, Catherine O'Hara, and Fred Willard.