Reviewed by: Dave Rettig
CONTRIBUTOR
Moral Rating: | Average |
Moviemaking Quality: |
|
Primary Audience: | 13 to Adult |
Genre: | Comedy |
Length: | 1 hr. 33 min. |
Year of Release: | 1997 |
USA Release: |
December 19, 1997 |
Featuring |
Nathan Lane Lee Evans Christopher Walken See all » |
Director |
Gore Verbinski |
Producer |
Bruce Cohen Tony Ludwig Alan Riche Dreamworks Pictures |
Distributor |
DreamWorks Pictures, aka DreamWorks Studios, a production label of Amblin Partners |
Home alone with a mouse are brothers, Ernie (Nathan Lane) and Lars Smuntz (Lee Evans). Once sons of string magnate Mr. Rudolph Smuntz (William Hickey), the family (now sans Papa Smuntz) is heir to a dilapidated string factory and a decrepit house. But fortune smiles on the Smuntz’s, when, while pursuing a rascally rodent, the brothers discover that their home is worth millions! Rather than accept the multimillion dollar offer for this lost architectural masterpiece, the brothers decide to auction off the estate. But before the house goes, the mouse goes!
However, this is not your average mouse. Bombs, traps, a maniacal exterminator (Christopher Walken), and a rabid cat all fall short of snuffing out the house mouse! Mighty Mouse and Macaulay Culkin move over for “Mousehunt”.
With the two “Home Alone” movies grossing millions, how could Dreamworks pass up an opportunity to get in on the “stupid adults falling down and getting hurt a lot” movie genre? Add a mouse for extra cuteness and instant hit! You do not even have to rewrite the script! This movie was so lacking in originality that it was just aching to be walked out of. Even your children will wonder why the “Wet Bandits” now own a string factory.
This movie contains so much sexual innuendo that it is difficult to decide for whom it was written. The beginning of the movie has the mayor vomiting a live cockroach, having a heart attack, and dying! The senior Smuntz corpse is flipped into a sewer drain and abandoned. The young Smuntz is nude except for several small balls of string strategically placed, which he quickly drops when a sexual proposition is made. The brothers Smuntz grope two young women in order to find this mouse, then go on to grope each other. I do not see how this is appropriate for children. Yet the plot is so unoriginal and the laughs so shallow that I doubt any adult could enjoy “Mousehunt”.
Pass on “Mousehunt”. Play some “Mousetrap,” at least then your family can spend some quality time together and you will not have to wonder how you are going to explain to your children why it is wrong to stick your arm down the front of a women’s blouse or down a man’s pants.
There are two very un-Christian scenes which involve a woman in Frederick’s of Hollywood clothing (very brief, no pun intended) and one scene when the brothers are trying to catch the mouse and it goes down the dress of a very developed woman and they reach in (grope really) after the mouse. Even my 13 year old and 11 year old didn’t complain when we asked them to fast forward and not look. The slapstick barrage got tiresome after awhile, and we felt overall that the search would have to continue for better videos that we felt Jesus wouldn’t mind sitting on the couch and watching with us.