La souris

Nathan Lane and Lee Evans star in this fun and sometimes touching film as brothers Ernie and Lars who inherit a mansion from their father. They are really dissapointed when the mansion turns out to be an old dump! They're keen when they find out that it's worth an absolute mint! They go about selling it to a collector of LaRue houses for loadsa dosh but there's one problem.....the mouse living in it! Throughout most of the movie we see the two comic stars chasing after the mouse and coming off the worse for it! It's fairly predictable but still very funny and the storyline and the scripts are actually quite original. Nathan Lane was pretty good in this movie as was Lee Evans. I'd say that this movie appeals to adults and kids because it has a decent storyline and engaging comic moments. 8/10

What a pleasant comedy! Here's a movie that brings back a subject which was specific to the cartoons from the forties and fifties: the game of the cat and the mouse. Here, there's a real mouse and the cat is epitomized by the Schmuntz brothers who wish to get rid of her in order to sell an old but expensive house. The more the film advances, the more the traps prepared by Lars and Ernie Schmuntz are worked out: it begins with the simple, trivial trap: the mousetrap and it ends with the appearance of the mouse-exterminator ( an unexpected and irresistible Christopher Walken). In short, what it seems to be a child's play at the beginning of the movie, ends up becoming a merciless fight in which there'll be no winner, no loser... Gore Verbinski adopted an inventive and clever making and he rightly choose his actors. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans form an ideal duo, not very far from the legendary Laurel and Hardy. They've got a different personality but are united to kill this mouse. Moreover, the movie doesn't only focus on this "mouse hunt" but also on the Schmuntz brothers' efforts to earn money in order to save their father's string factory ( a world without string is chaos...). Let's add some hilarious and efficient gags ; the movie pays a tribute to Tex Avery. Dialogs that kick the bull's eye and some cues are powerful such as: "in this mouse's mind, you are the intruders" says Walken to the Schmuntz brothers. At last, the real mouse is, of course, a little pest (she's even compared to Hitler with a tail) but in parallel, Verbinski attempts to make her touching. At the end, a comedy without too many claims but efficient enough to please to a large public.

Luna Macwilliams, age 6, Chicago, il.- 10 stars. "I love this movie because there are real people and a real mouse and it's real-ly funny! I also like the mouse's secret tricks that the viewer will wonder-how did he do that? Check out the mouse swinging across a chasm on a light bulb chain! It's amazing!" Kris- I give this movie 8 stars. Luna, age 6, gave it 10 stars and I thought since this is a family film, one I might not have seen without her, she deserved a voice. She gives a lot of kids flicks 10 stars, but not all. I thought the film captured the perfect feel of a cartoon, but done in live action. There are a few films that come to mind from the past that pulled off the cartoon feel, the Coen's Hudsucker Proxy, or more so even, Raising Arizona, Tim Burton's early films and a few others. None may be shot as perfectly in cartoon style as Mousehunt however, and none are as perfectly suited for kids age 3 to 10. Some of its visual delights could be called cinematic bliss, as great as anything procured by Welles or Lean. There is a fade from a white plastic home on a white cake that dissolves into a white home on a snowy white hill that should be shown in every film school. There is use of shadows and water that would make Ingmar Bergman proud. And of course, there is the mouse. The effects and photography are done so well that he convinced the kids he was real, and really smart and acrobatic. Lee Evans and Nathan Lane are perfectly cast as black and white characters. They don't look like they're related, Evan's too nice and Lane is too mean, but hey, it's a kids movie. Their characters work perfectly in the cartoon world they inhibit. They make you laugh, no matter how old you are. Christopher Walken plays an exterminator and it was right before he became overexposed in every other hip movie made. His best dialogue comes off-screen from a tape recorder. Walken could be just as funny on radio I guess, it's all in his verbiage. So rent or buy this for the family. It's one of those few gems that will have you all laughing at the same joke.

A children's film with a moral. Unlike a certain purveyor of saccharine entertainment, however, this moral is political, even metaphysical - if you exploit your workers, if you pursue greed until it makes you mad, if you break the ties that bind; if, in short, you snap the string, a Pandora's Box of chaos will be your lot, until you become a latterday Roderick Usher, your crumbling mansion a metaphor for your disintegrating mind.

With its Gilliam-like recreation of a dank, Orwellian universe; with its Tim Burton pervading of Gothic atmosphere; with its twisted Coens' live-action cartoon sensibility (imagine Christopher Walken in a children's film? Even better than that), and you have fun for all the family.

Based on the logline premise, poster, MPAA rating, and marketing, this is a "children's" film. However, there is really NOTHING here for children; it's very violent, overly adult, darkly charactered, and mean. Luckily, I'm not a child, so I found it delightfully silly in all its hot-headed hedonism. Just when it's mean-spiritedness begins to overwhelm the fun, it quickly turns the corner, making a point about the uselessness of selfishness. Most surprisingly, Silvestri's score is great.