With a huggable cast headed by Jack Black and Dylan Minnette, the romp, marking Columbia’s second Halloween-keyed release this season following in the monster footsteps of Hotel Transylvania 2, could create a similar frisson among nostalgic Stine fans and first-timers. It’s just one more way that “Goosebumps” gets it. The result is like gorging on trick-or-treat candy – it may sound like a fun idea, but you’ll pay for it later.
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Clean-cut teen protagonist Zach (Dylan Minnette) moves with his widowed mom (a grossly underused Amy Ryan) from New York to sleepy suburban Madison, Del.
Hannah (Odeya Rush) can’t stay away from Zach despite the demands of her overbearing and frightening father (Jack Black).
That’s especially hard to do when – in a “Rear Window” homage – Zach spies a father-daughter argument and Hannah disappears.
“I play R. L. Stine”, Black explained on Thursday’s Good Morning America. When he suspects Hannah’s in danger and the bumbling local police can’t help, Zach breaks in with his delightfully goofy friend Champ (the excellent Ryan Lee).
Based on the popular book series of the same name, Goosebumps is a horror comedy directed by Rob Letterman (Shark Tale, Gulliver’s Travels). The discovery of a roomful of Goosebumps manuscripts, the covers strangely locked, tempts Champ and before you can say “big chill” the massive star of The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena grows from the page and sets off on a rampage.
From a tech perspective, “Goosebumps” is up to the current standards of broad family entertainment – though its mix of CGI and practical effects to bring the monsters to life falls far too heavily on the cartoony CG side of the equation.
Having been freed from his confinement in the pages of Stine’s book, Slappy, a wicked ventriloquist dummy voiced by Black, seeks to make that freedom permanent by liberating every character from Stine’s imagination still trapped in a paperback prison.
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Although that choice means missing out on any sort of more inspired one-on-one interactions, director Letterman (Monsters Vs. Aliens) choreographs the ensuing creature chaos with panache while still allowing the ample humor in Darren Lemke’s script (from a story credited to Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski) to rise above the cacophony.
