Mouse Hunt Full Movie
Regarding the digital special effects, Ebert deemed the film "an excellent example of the way modern advances in special effects can sabotage a picture (Titanic is an example of effects being used wisely). Because it is possible to make a movie in which the mouse can do all sorts of clever things, the filmmakers have assumed incorrectly that it would be funny to see the mouse doing them."[7]
mouse hunt full movie
"Mouse Hunt'' is not very funny, and maybe couldn't have been very funny no matter what, because the pieces for comedy are not in place. It's the story of two luckless brothers who inherit a priceless architectural treasure, and hope to auction it for a big bundle, but are frustrated at every turn by the house's only inhabitant, a very clever mouse. Quick: Who do we sympathize with? The brothers, or the mouse? The movie doesn't know, and as a result the payoffs are lost in a comic vacuum. Pratfalls, slapstick and special effects are not funny in themselves (something Hollywood keeps forgetting). They're only funny when they apply to someone we have an attitude about, so that we want them to succeed, or fail. A comedy that hasn't assigned sympathy to some characters and made others hateful cannot expect to get many laughs, because the audience doesn't know who to laugh at, or with.
Sort of cute. It has been cinematically assembled from many sources (real trained mice, animated mice, an animatronic mouse for the closeups) but it has never been given a goal in life, other than to function as a plot device. Is the mouse intelligent? Does it know and care what is happening? Or is it simply a movie prop to be employed on cue? We aren't told, and we don't know. Because the mouse has no personality or personal history, because it has no particular goals other than to continue being a mouse, it isn't a sympathetic character, but simply an ingenious prop.
"Mouse Hunt'' is an excellent example of the way modern advances in special effects can sabotage a picture ("Titanic" is an example of effects being used wisely). Because it is possible to make a movie in which the mouse can do all sorts of clever things, the filmmakers have assumed incorrectly that it would be funny to see the mouse doing them.
"Mouse Hunt'' is a film that has gone to incredible effort and expense in order to sidetrack itself from comic payoffs. Less mouse, better dialogue and more strongly drawn characters might have made a funnier movie. I believe a mouse can be trained to pick up an olive and run with it, but I don't believe it's funny. Not unless I know the mouse.
Parents need to know that Mouse Hunt is a 1997 movie filled with unrelenting comedic pratfall-style violence. The two lead characters use a variety of implements to try to kill a mouse, including a shotgun and a nail gun. The mouse fills the house with gas later and blows the brothers sky-high. In the opening scene, the two brothers drop their father's coffin at the top of the church stairs, resulting in the corpse flying out of the coffin and into a manhole. There are some moments of inappropriate humor: The two lead characters are covered in excrement after accidentally destroying the sewer line with a vacuum, and the exterminator they hire ends up flat on his back with the mouse defecating on his mouth. This same exterminator eats a piece of mouse excrement to determine its diet. Early in the film, the mayor vomits a cockroach while eating in a fancy restaurant. There also are some moments of subtle and not-so-subtle sexual innuendo: A character talks of "making love like in nature films," the greedy wife of one of the lead characters appears in his office in lingerie, and the pursuit of the mouse leads to the two lead characters sticking their hands down the dresses of two women, and, later, unzipping the fly of one of the characters as he screams "Get it out!" There's also occasional profanity ("hell," "son of a bitch," "bastard").
In the vivacious 1997 movie MOUSE HUNT, Nathan Lane and Lee Evans are hapless brothers out to rid their house of a very shrewd mouse. Anyone who's dealt with mice on the loose in a home knows how pesky they can be. That's part of what makes Mouse Hunt fun; you can't help pitying the poor Smuntz brothers, who go to wild extremes trying to rid themselves of an elusive rodent. Kids will side with the mouse, of course, because it's cute and furry and performs some spectacular stunts (thanks to convincing and sparingly used computer-generated effects).
Production design by Linda DeScenna is an invaluable asset. In addition to creating the dilapidated mansion, she also designed a spectacularly grim city pound for the brothers to visit when they go looking for a mean, mouse-hunting cat. Composer Alan Silvestri provides a playful, mood-enhancing score. Other tech credits add to the fun.
Take Home Alone, put a small rodent in the place of Macaulay Culkin, add loads of gags and some excellent set pieces, and you've got a corking comedy from DreamWorks SKG, the home of Steven Spielberg. Yes, it is a mouse movie with nothing to do with Disney.
A tad overlong, and with an unnecessarily tidy ending, Mousehunt nevertheless has the wit and pace to keep adults laughing while the children are enthralled by the spectacular travails of the invincible mouse.
This was the 1997 directorial debut of Gore Verbinski, who later gave us the Pirates of the Caribbean films and Rango. This was also one of the first movies released by a fledgling little company called DreamWorks and the one which established their rivalry with Disney. One wonders if they made the film center around a mouse just to be ironic.
Leaving the screening, many children said this was not a children's movie. Although the pacing is good and the acting is adequate, the story is just too dark, and the sets are too dreary. The humor goes over the top, the slapstick violence is too sexual, the sexual innuendo is too blatant, and the depravity is too pronounced. At one point, the exterminator even eats one of the mouse droppings. For cleaner slapstick mayhem, check out MR. MAGOO.
Stevie, Pappy, Josh & Mikey hunt mice.********When their string magnate father, Rudolf Smuntz, dies, brothers Ernie (Nathan Lane) and Lars (Lee Evans) move into his decrepit mansion. Struggling to keep a promise to never sell the now unprofitable string factory, the brothers decide that restoring the house, the last built by a famous architect, could bring them a great deal of money. But during their restoration attempts, Ernie and Lars are continually frustrated by a malicious mouse that keeps destroying their efforts.Release date: December 19, 1997 (USA)Director: Gore VerbinskiStarring: Nathan Lane; Lee Evans; Maury Chaykin; Christopher WalkenBox office: $122.4 millionMusic by: Alan SilvestriProduced by: Bruce Cohen; Tony Ludwig; Alan Riche