The pleasures of “The House With a Clock in Its Walls” are thin. But they are there, including a plush armchair that is the upholstered equivalent of a panting house dog. That Vaccaro, whose Lewis loves radio, film and TV serial hero Captain Midnight (and sponsor Ovaltine) and likes to memorize such vocabulary words as “indomitable,” is so willing to scream like a girl is one of the film’s running jokes.
Black’s Jonathan loves chocolate chip cookies and serves them at every meal and confuses “black sheep” with “black swan.” Blanchett has fun with her character’s repeated hateful (but you know they love one another) banter with Jonathan. I’m not quite sure what the whole “See it in IMAX” thing is all about. “The House With a Clock in Its Walls” is not “Dunkirk.” But it’s not bad.
For a movie whose plot is centered around a clock, there’s simply no pace. The winding screenplay from Eric Kripke tries to accomplish too much at once. Storylines, scenes and characters become muddled. Maybe the biggest surprise is the lack of humor. Having Jack Black at your disposal should have made it easy to insert some funny situations. But there are no classic Black moments anywhere to be found. In fact, at times the actor looks downright disinterested.
A few serious topics are touched upon, but with no pay-off. And there are plenty of elements pulled from other family/horror films that either don’t make sense or are overly convenient.
The visuals are a notable, technical weak point. Black throws fireballs that look like something out of a C-level video game. His character is also surprisingly one-dimensional. Blanchett, on the other hand, does get to show why she’s one of the great actresses of our time in a couple of nice scenes. Vaccaro, who has more screen time than the veteran stars, over-acts in practically all of his scenes.
I was hoping Roth could pull-off something fun, innovative and refreshing with this material. Instead, you can add “House with a Clock” to the collection of flat, forgettable live-action family films.
Eli Roth...hate or love his work, is well known and successful at precisely what he does, and making a kid’s movie based on a barely remembered novel from the seventies is not something he needs to do unless he wants to. Kripke is in a similar place, and he’s talked now at length about how the original book The House with a Clock in its Walls was his favorite novel growing up as a kid and that it inspired much of what Supernatural became. That’s not say that you as a viewer will notice anything more than the curious similarities: the small town Midwest, the dropping of a few familiar names like Azazel.
But there’s something beautiful about people coming together and making art out of something they loved as children. Trying to use their own particular medium to show children something they once loved, to rekindle that spark for a new generation. They do it without cynicism, without a cash grab wink at the adults in the audience. Passion projects are fragile things though. Empathy makes you smile, from knowing you’re seeing what someone has lovingly sculpted. But you can never quite put yourself in exactly their position, can’t see it with their eyes. Because no matter how skilled they are, their view of the work will always be through the eyes of the child they were.
And so there’s a sadness too in watching movies like "The House with a Clock in Its Walls". You want it to be good, are rooting for the makers of the film to transcend the source material and show you what it is that so inspired them all those decades ago. And it fails on that front. Films like that almost always do.
Black’s Jonathan loves chocolate chip cookies and serves them at every meal and confuses “black sheep” with “black swan.” Blanchett has fun with her character’s repeated hateful (but you know they love one another) banter with Jonathan. I’m not quite sure what the whole “See it in IMAX” thing is all about. “The House With a Clock in Its Walls” is not “Dunkirk.” But it’s not bad.
James Verniere
Boston Herald
For a movie whose plot is centered around a clock, there’s simply no pace. The winding screenplay from Eric Kripke tries to accomplish too much at once. Storylines, scenes and characters become muddled. Maybe the biggest surprise is the lack of humor. Having Jack Black at your disposal should have made it easy to insert some funny situations. But there are no classic Black moments anywhere to be found. In fact, at times the actor looks downright disinterested.
A few serious topics are touched upon, but with no pay-off. And there are plenty of elements pulled from other family/horror films that either don’t make sense or are overly convenient.
The visuals are a notable, technical weak point. Black throws fireballs that look like something out of a C-level video game. His character is also surprisingly one-dimensional. Blanchett, on the other hand, does get to show why she’s one of the great actresses of our time in a couple of nice scenes. Vaccaro, who has more screen time than the veteran stars, over-acts in practically all of his scenes.
I was hoping Roth could pull-off something fun, innovative and refreshing with this material. Instead, you can add “House with a Clock” to the collection of flat, forgettable live-action family films.
Jackson Murphy
Lights, Camera, Jackson
Eli Roth...hate or love his work, is well known and successful at precisely what he does, and making a kid’s movie based on a barely remembered novel from the seventies is not something he needs to do unless he wants to. Kripke is in a similar place, and he’s talked now at length about how the original book The House with a Clock in its Walls was his favorite novel growing up as a kid and that it inspired much of what Supernatural became. That’s not say that you as a viewer will notice anything more than the curious similarities: the small town Midwest, the dropping of a few familiar names like Azazel.
But there’s something beautiful about people coming together and making art out of something they loved as children. Trying to use their own particular medium to show children something they once loved, to rekindle that spark for a new generation. They do it without cynicism, without a cash grab wink at the adults in the audience. Passion projects are fragile things though. Empathy makes you smile, from knowing you’re seeing what someone has lovingly sculpted. But you can never quite put yourself in exactly their position, can’t see it with their eyes. Because no matter how skilled they are, their view of the work will always be through the eyes of the child they were.
And so there’s a sadness too in watching movies like "The House with a Clock in Its Walls". You want it to be good, are rooting for the makers of the film to transcend the source material and show you what it is that so inspired them all those decades ago. And it fails on that front. Films like that almost always do.
Steven Lloyd Wilson
Pajiba
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