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

When their father dies, brothers Ernie and Lars inherit a rundown string factory and a run down house. When they find the house may be worth millions they set about renovating it to auction it. However they don't reckon on the house's one inhabitant – a small mouse – who has no intention of going anywhere.

In the wrong hands this could easily have turned into a cruel slapstick and nothing else. It's easy to see this sort of thing turning into a Home Alone type thing with the mouse dishing out cruel punishment after cruel punishment. However it's more than that, although it has elements of those films. The film is witty – mixing the slapstick with a more adult humour and, although the slapstick is cartoony, it is also clever and imaginative in most cases.

The strength of the film is in three performances. First and second is Lane and Evans, both have an air of Laurel and Hardy (especially Lane) and they make for a good double act. Lane gets to do his usual stuff while the more goofy antics of Lars suit Evans' stand-up routine background to the ground. However the main success is the mouse. In other hands he would have been a mere excuse for destruction, however here he has `humanity' – a character if you will. This is perfectly demonstrated by the unintentional chase with a nail gun – how dramatic! How tense! But also how touching – the mouse is given intelligence and has a motivation for what happens.

Of course at heart this is a kids film and it is a very good one at that. However these other points give it the feel that it was made for adults too. Certainly the inclusion of Walken as a pest controller is one no child will get.

Overall this is well made and is more that just a crude slapstick affair. It can be enjoyed on that level but it just feels that little more mature. To illustrate what I mean – can you imagine the difference if Chris Columbus had directed it? Now you've got me!

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.

This movie is so funny. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans are the sons of a man that died that owned a string factory.

Right in the beginning the fun starts. The brothers argue about the color of Lee/Lars Smuntz's funeral clothes. As they walk down the stairs of the church the handle breaks off the casket, their father's body goes flying out of the casket, into the air and down a open manhole in the street.

The characters are all funny. The animation is amazing. Nathan/Ernie Smuntz has a restaurant and serves dinner to the Mayor who is very fat who is with his family. His daughters see a cockroach without a head running across the table. The Mayor realizes he has eaten the head. He falls back in the chair and passes out. The movement of this giant roach running on the table is so hysterical.

The sons inherit a house from their father who was kind of weird. No one lives in the house and when the men go there they find a mouse who is like the owner of the house. He crawls in all the spaces and takes what he wants and just takes over and causes problems for the sons. The animation of what the mouse does and what they do to catch it is so funny.

The sons end up hiring a man to trap the mouse. The exterminator is played by Christopher Walkens. He is really good in this movie. He has his own equipment and is experienced. He talks loud so the mouse will hear what he has to say because he believes the mouse understands him from his experience and he is trying to fool it. More laughter.

The mouse is smarter than everyone this is a great funny movie to see.

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.