Goosebumps

I'll be honest, I'm not totally sure what my intention was in watching this movie. I knew it was rated PG and it looked like a nice family picture so it wouldn't fall into the category of movies I've been watching as of late. I also knew that because it had such a wide release, I knew that it wasn't going to be scary. I also never really read the Goosebumps books so I didn't have much of a connection to the story or really got any of the easter Eggs that I can only assume were in this movie. This really came out of nowhere. The only explanation is, it's almost Halloween and I wanted to feel like I was watching something in the spirit without watching something super intense or scary. I guess mission accomplished?

Goosebumps follows the story of a kid named Zach (played by Dylan Minnette) who moves to Madison, Delaware with his mother (played by Amy Ryan). Next door to their new house, an eccentric man (played by Jack Black and his daughter Hannah (played by Odeya Rush) live in isolation and he is over protective of her. The neighbor warns the main character that he will not disturb them and he won't go anywhere near his daughter. Of course, there is an attraction between Zach and Hannah and the two have what I guess can be called a cute romantic connection.

Well it is soon discovered that Zach's neighbor is the famous author R.L. Stine and in his house are a bunch of Goosebumps manuscripts that are magical and contain within the pages the real monsters that Stine writes about and they can be released by merely opening the books and releasing them to the world. When through a series of events Zach accidentally releases some of the monsters, he must team up with R.L. Stine, Hannah, and his weird friend Champ (played by Ryan Lee) to capture the monsters and return them back to their rightful place in the books on Stine's shelf.

This is a fine family picture. Ultimately everything feels very safe in this film. The main character is your white bread teenage boy who is embarassed by his mother, new to school so he's finding it difficult to make friends, and he has a crush on your typical white bread teenage girl. You've got your silly sidekick and they're off doing their romp of an adventure. Everything is pretty safe and profitable. But because of this, there aren't a lot of risks happening in this movie. I've heard that originally Tim Burton was the one who was supposed to direct this film and I can only imagine how intriguing that might have been... back in the 80s and 90s that is. It's safe and probably an easy movie to show to your kids if you want to start breaking them into PG movies. But safe can be pretty boring in this film.

And then there's Jack Black and man is this guy holding back in this film. I guess Jack Black is getting to the point where he's playing the father figure... it's kind of bumming me out because if Jack Black can get that old that means that I'm getting old...

Jack Black used to be this super hyper emoting actor. And yeah he's still eccentric and I won't say he's not talented, but he didn't really bring it for this film. He spends the entire movie doing a really weird non-distinguishable accent that I guess is supposed to be funny but it doesn't really do a lot for me. There are a couple moments where Jack Black is trying to act and it also makes me sad because he's not that horrible of an actor. But with a story like Goosebumps, it's going to be pretty streamlined and any interesting character development, especially between him and his daughter is pretty lacking.

Jack Black in this film is like the rest of the film. Very safe, not trying to offend anybody or do anything super unique, just create an easy fun family film.

Like I said, I didn't read Goosbumps so I'm going into this totally blind. I knew who R.L. Stine was and that Goosebumps were books, but I didn't know anything about the monsters in the books. However, based on what I've heard, it follows the monsters of as many books as it could and treated them with a great deal of respect in the source material.

The bad part about these monsters is because it's a PG film, they're very tame and don't even kill anybody. There's a scene where a kid gets snatched by a giant praying mantis and I thought, wow they killed that kid? But then he shows up later with a giant full body cast on. The monsters weren't threatening and I never felt like the main characters were in danger.

The main villain is a Ventriloquist Dummy named Slappy.

What was a little bit clever was the fact that Slappy was voiced by Jack Black too and it was kind of like a play on the fact that Stine creates him and he's kind of his child. But again, it kind of falls flat when Slappy doesn't really do anything. Yeah he disappears and reappears whenever he wants but I never felt like he could actually do anything.

But with all the monsters from all your worst nightmares and a small town being attacked by these monsters, I couldn't help but think this movie is actually the perfect love child of a cross between Gremlins and Cabin in the Woods. Both are films I don't love, but I do recognize the really creative ideas that they bring to the table. If you brought those two ideas together, you could have actually had a really funny black comedy with a lot of imaginative ideas and creepy things happen. I mean if you've seen Cabin in the Woods you know what I'm talking about. If you've seen Gremlins you know the havoc that can be had in a small town. By meshing those two things together I think you find yourself with a really funny and unique film that builds off of what has been built in the past.

But instead we opt for a pretty straight forward Halloween movie for kids and I think it suffers. The kids don't feel like real kids, the stakes aren't high. You don't even need to make it rated R, you can just have higher stakes. That's what kids want, they want stories to feel important and meaningful.

Oh and I forgot, Jillian Bell is in this movie...

She's not funny. She tries to be but she's not. She was good in 22 Jump Street but she's not good in this film... Amy Ryan is good though. But she's good in everything.

Overall, Goosebumps is a safe film. Not bad, not good, just safe. There's a lot of good ideas in the film and there was a lot more they could have done, but overall it's kind of bland and just not as good as I think it could have been. If you have kids, this might be a fun film for them. I'm obviously not the target audience of this film and if you're older than 12, you probably won't get much out of this film. It's not bad, it just not really anything very exciting.

But those are my thoughts on Goosebumps. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog as well as my live tweets that I do every once in a while for a film I'm watching.

I'll leave you with this. The thing I will give this movie credit for is it brought me back to Tenacious D. Here's the first song I heard from them. It's awesome. Enjoy!