Spooky House (2002)
A magician with a mysterious secret lives alone with his jaguar, Shadow, in the Spooky House, an old mansion rigged with magic tricks and hidden chambers.
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Pretty Good
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
I saw this movie as a member of the Adult Jury of the festival that awarded it the Best of the Festival prize. I was surprised that it won an award because it was not very clever, and had nothing of interest in the story. It is a film for children aged 3-5, it has colorful costumes and an animal. as i watched it i felt that it was condescending towards its audience. I thought of it as a box of candy on screen, nothing to interest or even challenge the minds of the kids who would be watching it, just something sweet to keep them happy for an hour or so. Considering the quality of the other feature films shown in the festival I was at a loss to understand how it came to win. And what motivated Ben Kinglsey to star in it.
Just watched Spooky House on Sky Movies, and my daughter and I both enjoyed it. The magic element was good to watch, with sufficient mild horror to keep an 8-year old happy (and jumping), and the wonderful Ben Kingsley for her mum!I actually found the dummies in the magician's house quite scary, having always been a little afraid of ventriloquists' dummies since I was a child.Spooky House was actually more fun to watch than Disney's Haunted Mansion, as it didn't have all the inane plotting of that film. This was simple movie hokum that just leaves you feeling glad you watched it.
OK, my wife rented this off-the-shelf, thinking it would be a cute "family" movie, so we were forced to buy pizza and sit through it with our kids (9 & 5). In a nutshell, the kids loved it, although my 5 year old thought parts of it were a bit "scary", and didn't want to sit through it. For my wife and I, however, it was definitely a tremendous groaner...The biggest plus was the fact that it was SOOOO bad that we actually laughed at how bad it was! This was one of those "I'm too drunk to go to sleep...what's on TV?" B-movies from the old USA Network "Up All Night" series (if you remember those).There were parts of it that actually reminded us of the old "Little Rascals" shows, where the kids---and their so-obviously-memorized scripts---were almost like puppets. The super-fast-motion scenes to speed things up were good for a chuckle.Rent this for your kids to enjoy, but don't dare watch it yourself unless you want to bang your head afterwards for wasting this much time.
A cracking film for all ages, but in particular for the youngsters, I think they'll love it. Lots of terrific magic tricks, a little bit of (mild) horror and a great Spooky House setting too. Ben Kingsley is excellent playing the part of the Great Zamboni, as is little Matt Weinberg as orphan Max. It's not just illusions and hocus pocus horror though, there's a nice heart warming story along with it. Definitely worth a look.