Goosebumps
(2015)
Director:
Rob Letterman
Writers:
Darren Lemke (screenplay), Scott Alexander(story)
Stars:
Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush |
Storyline
Upset about affecting from a big city to a small town, teenager
Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver coating when he meets the beautiful
girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But each silver lining has a
cloud, and Zach's comes when he learns that Hannah has a secretive dad who is
revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling
Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so
strange... he is a convict of his own imagination - the monsters that his books
made famous are real, and Stine protects his booklovers by keeping them locked
up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the fiends from their
manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it's suddenly up to Stine,
Zach, Hannah, and Zach's friend Champion (Ryan Lee) to get all of them back in
the books anywhere they belong.
Details
Country:
USA | Australia
Language:
English
Release Date:
16 October 2015 (USA)
Also Known As:
Chair de poule
Box Office:
Budget:
$85,000,000 (estimated)
User Reviews:
Instead
of familiarizing any one or a select few of Stine's 100-plus
"Goosebumps" tales, the filmmakers opt for a greatest-hits hodge-podge
that prioritizes the spectacle of a parade of monsters over any attempt at air
or mystery. The result is like gorging on trick-or- treat candy — it may sound
like a amusing idea, but you'll pay for it later.
Clean-cut teen character Zach (Dylan Minnette) moves with his widowed mom (a grossly underused Amy Ryan) after New York to sleepy suburban Madison, Del. Hoping for a fresh start in the wake of his father's premature death, Zach finds an immediate distraction in the enigmatic girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush), whose overprotective dad (Jack Black) warns Zach in no uncertain terms to stay away.
That's particularly hard to do when — in a "Rear Window" homage — Zach spies a father-daughter quarrel and Hannah disappears. Soon enough, a meta twist reveals that Hannah's father is actually author R.L. Stine. He lives in seclusion to protect his original "Goosebumps" manuscripts, which have the power to obvious the monsters described within when opened.
Zach and his geeky pal, Champ (Ryan Lee), determine that supernatural development firsthand when they accidentally unleash the "Abominable Snowman of Pasadena" while snooping around Stine's house. During the resultant chaos, another creature comes to life: maniacal ventriloquist's dummy Slappy (voiced by Black), who proceeds to spread Stine's manuscripts all over town and conjures everything from a wolfman to man-eating plants, trigger-happy aliens with freeze rays and a vampire poodle.
Director Rob Letterman (who previously cooperated with Black on "Gulliver's Travels") stages a few sensibly well-crafted monster- specific setpieces, including a snowman showdown in an ice rink and a gang of demonic garden gnomes invading a kitchen, but for the most part "Goosebumps" rapidly devolves into a frantic roller-coaster ride with random creatures exploding up at every turn. A list provided in the film's production notes tallies 25 different ghosts in all (and many of those, like the extra-terrestrials and gnomes, appear in packs).
The ADD overload combined with an reasonably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one's ever in real hazard, and the fiends are never too scary) results in a throwaway product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to reverberate with no one.
Presentations are all over the map. Black's hammy, Orson Welles- inspired go nose-dives to add much humanity to the role of a spooky author. Best known for secondary work in film and TV, Minnette sufficiently steps up to leading-man status, though his charm is far too bland to invite real rooting interest. Talented comedians Timothy Simons and Ken Marino are wasted in off-the-cuff roles, while Jillian Bell works energetically to steal her scenes as Zach's continually single, Bedazzler-crazy aunt, but that's petty theft at best.
From a tech viewpoint, "Goosebumps" is up to the present standards of comprehensive family entertainment — though its mix of CGI and applied belongings to bring the monsters to life falls far too heavily on the cartoony CG side of the equation. Aside from Slappy, a legit dummy puppeted by Avery Lee Jones, the key villains are predominantly visual effects.
There was a time when Tim Burton — who confidently would've put a more distinctive stamp on belongings — flirted with the project, which likely clarifies why Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("Ed Wood," "Big Eyes") have story credit.
Clean-cut teen character Zach (Dylan Minnette) moves with his widowed mom (a grossly underused Amy Ryan) after New York to sleepy suburban Madison, Del. Hoping for a fresh start in the wake of his father's premature death, Zach finds an immediate distraction in the enigmatic girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush), whose overprotective dad (Jack Black) warns Zach in no uncertain terms to stay away.
That's particularly hard to do when — in a "Rear Window" homage — Zach spies a father-daughter quarrel and Hannah disappears. Soon enough, a meta twist reveals that Hannah's father is actually author R.L. Stine. He lives in seclusion to protect his original "Goosebumps" manuscripts, which have the power to obvious the monsters described within when opened.
Zach and his geeky pal, Champ (Ryan Lee), determine that supernatural development firsthand when they accidentally unleash the "Abominable Snowman of Pasadena" while snooping around Stine's house. During the resultant chaos, another creature comes to life: maniacal ventriloquist's dummy Slappy (voiced by Black), who proceeds to spread Stine's manuscripts all over town and conjures everything from a wolfman to man-eating plants, trigger-happy aliens with freeze rays and a vampire poodle.
Director Rob Letterman (who previously cooperated with Black on "Gulliver's Travels") stages a few sensibly well-crafted monster- specific setpieces, including a snowman showdown in an ice rink and a gang of demonic garden gnomes invading a kitchen, but for the most part "Goosebumps" rapidly devolves into a frantic roller-coaster ride with random creatures exploding up at every turn. A list provided in the film's production notes tallies 25 different ghosts in all (and many of those, like the extra-terrestrials and gnomes, appear in packs).
The ADD overload combined with an reasonably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one's ever in real hazard, and the fiends are never too scary) results in a throwaway product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to reverberate with no one.
Presentations are all over the map. Black's hammy, Orson Welles- inspired go nose-dives to add much humanity to the role of a spooky author. Best known for secondary work in film and TV, Minnette sufficiently steps up to leading-man status, though his charm is far too bland to invite real rooting interest. Talented comedians Timothy Simons and Ken Marino are wasted in off-the-cuff roles, while Jillian Bell works energetically to steal her scenes as Zach's continually single, Bedazzler-crazy aunt, but that's petty theft at best.
From a tech viewpoint, "Goosebumps" is up to the present standards of comprehensive family entertainment — though its mix of CGI and applied belongings to bring the monsters to life falls far too heavily on the cartoony CG side of the equation. Aside from Slappy, a legit dummy puppeted by Avery Lee Jones, the key villains are predominantly visual effects.
There was a time when Tim Burton — who confidently would've put a more distinctive stamp on belongings — flirted with the project, which likely clarifies why Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("Ed Wood," "Big Eyes") have story credit.
