Mouse Hunt is
a movie that crams years of slapstick comedy into one film. It’s the kind of
movie you’ll enjoy as a child because the slapstick comes flying at you, and
reason doesn’t matter. That’s what I got from this movie, comparing the time I
first saw it in late 1997 to watching it now.
Seeing it now,
the movie feels like a mixture of errors. It comes off as an idea blown to
pieces by too many other ideas crammed into it. This makes it hard to
understand what you’re supposed to be laughing at. Is it the mouse, who seems
to be one step smarter than two adults? Is it the pair of adult brothers whose
cruelty in trying to kill a mouse makes them seem stupid? Or is it the various
measures used by other hired hands to kill the mouse?
Whatever reason this movie had for thinking it’s a comedy goes beyond my
recollection of what comedy was in the ’90s and what comedy is now.
The plot is
about two brothers—Ernie and Lars Smuntz, played by Nathan Lane and Lee Evans.
The brothers are the sons of a once-wealthy string magnate, Rudolf Smuntz.
Rudolf and his sons didn’t seem to have much chemistry, especially Rudolf and
Ernie. Ernie loathed his father, for reasons that are neither clear nor shown.
It’s like the writers felt it was better to leave us viewers guessing why a
grown man wouldn’t care for his dying father.
After Rudolf’s
death, he leaves his estate to his sons, which includes an outdated string
factory, an old house, and a pile of debt. Ernie decides it’s best to sell the
house, and they discover that the house is an antique.
They decide to hold an open house and realize the house could be worth more
than $10 million. This makes Ernie suggest that the best way to get top value
for the house is to auction it off.
The only
problem? The house has a resident mouse. Ernie and Lars do everything—and
more—to kill the mouse so that nothing gets in the way of their millions as
they remodel the house for the auction.
Regardless of
any negative talk this movie might have gotten, it was a box office success. So
successful, in fact, that I’m surprised a sequel wasn’t greenlit. The man
behind directing this movie was Gore Verbinski, and this was his full-length
directorial debut.
In the end, I can say this: if you liked Mouse Hunt in the ’90s and are thinking of giving it another go now, I’d advise against it. Stick with the memory—it serves better.
0 comments:
Post a Comment