by AArdvark » Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:08 pm
Review
Spoilers ahead (as if anyone cares)
So what I'm seeing is a trend. Hollywood doesn't want my money. I'm not the demographic they were aiming at when they made this, even though it's people my age that would WANT to go see it. OK let me get back to the rant in a moment but first the review...
See, they turned a really good ghost story into a long Goosebumps episode. It could have been good, but it wasn't. Jack Black was doing his Jack Blackiest acting (he was doing his Jim Carrey acting style, actually)
Kate Whatshername was not bad. She was limited by the bad writing but did OK within those confines. Not old enough to play the character properly.
Dork kid that played Lewis was a poor showing. He didn't need the steampunk goggles to show he was a dork-in-training. He could have done it with, you know, acting. Oh, the director had him using a magic 8-ball to talk to his dead parents. Ug.
It felt like a sloppy big budget mess. Too much CGI, way too much. There was a chair, a recliner that acted like a house dog. There was a topiary shrub shape like a griffin that pooped leaves, in case cheap laughs were needed.
There were jump scares, of course. I feel sorry if anyone brought small chillun to the theater to see this.
No fusebox dwarf!
No Spanish Armada!
No cool galleon hookah!
They kept the basic plot but added so much junk I had to walk away a couple of times. They turned it into an empowerment theme, where Lewis (the kid) learns magic spells to become more popular. They changed it from 1948 to 1950 to explain why there were so many minorities. (hint: in 1948 African-Americans didn't go to white schools) But this is Hollywood, make believe, am I right?
They also made the clock in the walls so big that it looked more like underground mining equipment. In the book it was just an ordinary seven- day regulator that had the power to end the world. Apparently this had to be a big huge CGI monster to be believable.
Hollywood doesn't understand context. Any ordinary object can be scary in the proper context. Take a harmless book-bag or backpack. Sitting on the hall table it's not scary at all, BUT take that same book-bag and put it in an airport corridor with yellow tape, sniffer dogs and lots of police wearing bomb-squad armor and it becomes scary. It's all about context.
Ordinary clock can be scary, doesn't have to be big huge CGI mining equipment. IF they were to take the time to make it scary, instead of stupid moving chairs and lawn hedges that shit.
Here's another thing Hollywood doesn't get. Make the movie for the adults that want to see it and they will bring the kids. They made the movie for the kids and forced the adults to sit through it. That's ass-backwards. It felt like a cash grab to me.
I didn't spend any money on this, BTW. I'm not going to buy the Blu-Ray, because it sucked.
THE
TWO OUT OF SIX
STARS
AARDVARK
Review
Spoilers ahead (as if anyone cares)
So what I'm seeing is a trend. Hollywood doesn't want my money. I'm not the demographic they were aiming at when they made this, even though it's people my age that would WANT to go see it. OK let me get back to the rant in a moment but first the review...
See, they turned a really good ghost story into a long Goosebumps episode. It could have been good, but it wasn't. Jack Black was doing his Jack Blackiest acting (he was doing his Jim Carrey acting style, actually)
Kate Whatshername was not bad. She was limited by the bad writing but did OK within those confines. Not old enough to play the character properly.
Dork kid that played Lewis was a poor showing. He didn't need the steampunk goggles to show he was a dork-in-training. He could have done it with, you know, acting. Oh, the director had him using a magic 8-ball to talk to his dead parents. Ug.
It felt like a sloppy big budget mess. Too much CGI, way too much. There was a chair, a recliner that acted like a house dog. There was a topiary shrub shape like a griffin that pooped leaves, in case cheap laughs were needed.
There were jump scares, of course. I feel sorry if anyone brought small chillun to the theater to see this.
No fusebox dwarf!
No Spanish Armada!
No cool galleon hookah!
They kept the basic plot but added so much junk I had to walk away a couple of times. They turned it into an empowerment theme, where Lewis (the kid) learns magic spells to become more popular. They changed it from 1948 to 1950 to explain why there were so many minorities. (hint: in 1948 African-Americans didn't go to white schools) But this is Hollywood, make believe, am I right?
They also made the clock in the walls so big that it looked more like underground mining equipment. In the book it was just an ordinary seven- day regulator that had the power to end the world. Apparently this had to be a big huge CGI monster to be believable.
Hollywood doesn't understand context. Any ordinary object can be scary in the proper context. Take a harmless book-bag or backpack. Sitting on the hall table it's not scary at all, BUT take that same book-bag and put it in an airport corridor with yellow tape, sniffer dogs and lots of police wearing bomb-squad armor and it becomes scary. It's all about context.
Ordinary clock can be scary, doesn't have to be big huge CGI mining equipment. IF they were to take the time to make it scary, instead of stupid moving chairs and lawn hedges that shit.
Here's another thing Hollywood doesn't get. Make the movie for the adults that want to see it and they will bring the kids. They made the movie for the kids and forced the adults to sit through it. That's ass-backwards. It felt like a cash grab to me.
I didn't spend any money on this, BTW. I'm not going to buy the Blu-Ray, because it sucked.
THE
TWO OUT OF SIX
STARS
AARDVARK