Monster House is Sony's idea of a fun Halloween movie for kids. I saw this a while back when it was in theaters.

STORY: Three teens discover that their neighbor's creepy, old house is alive. The story seems to be based on an urban legend. The characters are kind of cliche as well. .5 Star.

ART: The people in charge of the models missed the mark. The backgrounds and props all look good, but the people are off. They look more like toys or puppets than people. .5 Stars.

PERFORMANCE: The voice actors did a fine job and the animations good. I especially like how they took the house and made it a living, breathing thing. 1 Star.

SOUND/MUSIC: The sound quality is fine. The music was OK, but forgettable. .5 Stars

OVERALL: This film is great for the children it was meant for, especially around Halloween. For the older audience, it's more of a mixed bag.

I will say it now, I hate motion capture when it's used in the way Monster House uses it: to copy live action frame by frame, movement by movement. It makes the characters seem less animated and more like walking and talking rubber dolls with creepy lifeless eyes.
Motion capture can be done well when used as reference and that only (such as in the case of Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy). However, when you're trying to directly copy life it comes out basically looking like crap.

That's how Monster House is visually. It looks like crap. The characters look and move very blocky and awkwardly and hardly ever emote... like an actor forced into an elaborate rubber Halloween costume. The "animation" is just above what you get in a video game.
The "monster house" is really the only thing that looks halfway decent... it was actually ANIMATED and wasn't mocapped.

Now, why am I giving it a C+ instead of an F? Because the story was decent and held up fairly well despite the weak visuals.
It's an interesting concept and was executed pretty well.

Story summary from IMDB:

"The teenage DJ is observing his neighbor Nebbercracker on the other side of their street in the suburb that destroys tricycles of children that trespass his lawn. When DJ's parents travel on the eve of Halloween and the abusive nanny Zee stays with him, he calls his clumsy best friend Chowder to play basketball. But when the ball falls in Nebbercracker's lawn, the old man has a siege, and sooner they find that the house is a monster. Later the boys rescue the smart Jenny from the house and the trio unsuccessfully tries to convince the babysitter, her boyfriend Bones and two police officers that the haunted house is a monster, but nobody believes on them. The teenagers ask their video-game addicted acquaintance Skull how to destroy the house, and they disclose its secret on the Halloween night."

It's a pretty original idea. There are, surprisingly, a lot of funny moments. The video game addicted character "Skull" and the two police officers come to mind.

The story behind the monster house itself is a pretty cool concept also.

So, all and all, while not a visually pleasing movie, it was an enjoyable 91 minutes killed and it was, overall, worth the dollar I spent at Albertsons to rent it.

I give this movie a 75 C.

Do you ever miss the old, classic Steven Spielberg movies like The Goonies and Gremlins?

Well, Monster House is a blast of nostalgia from the past which screams with deja vu for us old-timers, but which may be just what the Goosebumps generation is missing.

(Seriously, the voice actor who played 'Chowder' sounded so much like 'Chunk' from The Goonies that I half wondered if they've kept him in suspended animation for all this time...)

Anyway, Monster House has lots of scary atmosphere, and is a perfect Halloween movie for kids who like spooky movies. There's lots of action, too. There's some humor, but it didn't impress me as being particularly funny. The animation never really 'wowed' me off my chair, but was adequate.

I'd have to say, though, that it really felt like a movie that OUGHT to have been done live-action with CGI effects, instead of fully-animated.

To be fair, I think part of my disappointment in this film stems from my high expectations of it. It looked original and imaginative, and don't get me wrong, it is, but the way it was presented was mediocre at best.

The deeper plot of the movie is quite bizarre, but still intriguing. It is quite dark, yes; I can't decide whether such themes would be of any interest to some kids, as it does require them to listen and doesn't depend too much on stunning visuals. (Unless of course, you're looking at the 3D version, which I sadly didn't.)

The characters are likeable too, and I like how the children are in the middle of their youth, still having fun yet experiencing some maturity.

So what went wrong here? Well when the story begins to hit its climax, it starts to rush and feels really bland, as if you're not satisfied with it. I was at the point where I was wishing some things would hurry along, yet get better, and I wished the ending would have been carried out a bit differently. It has nothing to do with the conclusion in general, but I just wish it was presented in another less boring way. Also, some of the jokes seemed a bit forced and overused.

Other than that, the movie was quite nice, especially the beginning while the whole adventure is going on and you're trying to figure out what's happening. It's worth a first look at least.

Monster House is Sony's newest CG offering. Three teens have discovered that the house across the street hates kids and comes alive when no adults are looking.

This movie has an excellent story and very well written, believable thirteen year old characters. In fact, the most enjoyably part of this movie is watching these kids be kids. They don't save the world or get involved in plots that should be reserved for adults. They are not concerned with the affairs of the adult world. They exist in the wonder and excitement of a kid's world. At one point in the movie I leaned over to my girlfriend and said "I wish I were a kid again". I wanted to have as much fun as they were having on screen.

But don't let this fool you. Monster House is not a movie for young kids. Parts of it are downright scary. The house is evil and very menacing and I was actually shocked at how scary it was. But this was due to some excellent directing of Gil Kenan and convincing performances by the main cast (Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke).

Monster House is the second movie to be made by Robert Zemeckis using the motion capture process. That is, actors wear many little markers at each joint to indicate movement when tracked by a computer program. Whatever the actor does, the character onscreen mimics perfectly. This adds realism to the movements of the characters and especially adds believable features to the faces of the characters (a process that has greatly improved since 2004's Polar Express).