Monster House -- 2006 -- PG

Finally...someone used animation for something a little beyond just a kids' movie. Granted, this film has children as the leads, and may have even been marketed to that crowd, but I deem it a bit too scary for my young crew. And don't balk at the PG rating; Jaws was rated PG...still is.

Basically, you have a guy living in a big ugly house. He is the grumpiest of the grumpy old men, and takes anything that lands on his lawn...but why. Well, we get an inkling of something when our main kid thinks he killed the guy. Before you know it, this house is alive. Not just groaning and being Amityville, but actually a living beast in the form of a house.

The film is loaded with humor the young adolescent crowd would get, and the scares are built more for that 'tween group as well, but I was engaged by the feature.

If I were to complain about something, I do have a couple. First, I want to ask: where is everybody? We have a small town that's generally quiet. And one night, a lot of stuff happens that ain't so quiet...and no one so much as looks out their window? It was really video game-ish in that respect that they did everything they did and the only people to take notice were the cops.

The other thing is the cliche babysitter. For one, can we get a babysitter that doesn't make rock look evil? She has a look, and everything she does revolves around that look. While this is normally a good thing, in this case, it just gives one section of the film a level of predictability that shames the rest. The creativity of the house and everything the trio goes through was just incredible, and we get the cliche babysitter as a setup.

What would I like to see? A self-obsessed genius who only cares about writing her big symphony. She brings in her own keyboard to write with and keeps telling him to keep it down while she works. That would be fun to watch. But no, we get rock girl who just wants to break all the parents' rule. Argh!

That part only factored into the first part of the film. Once we get into it, it's a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out.