GOOSEBUMPS (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

GOOSEBUMPS (2016) movie

Genre               |   Horror

Classification   |   PG

Running time   |   103 minutes

Released         |   14 January 2016

cast

Jack Black as R.L. Stine
Dylan Minnette as Zach
Odeya Rush as Hannah
Ryan Lee as Champ

director

Rob Letterman

writer

​Darren Lemke ... (screenplay)
 
Scott Alexander ... (story) &
Larry Karaszewski ... (story)
 
R.L. Stine ... ("Goosebumps" books)

cinematographer

​Javier Aguirresarobe

music

Danny Elfman

film editor

​Jim May

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box office result

Worldwide             $​150,170,815

Australia                 $​​6,845,788 ​

North America        $​ 80,080,379    

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the best dialogue

Zach Cooper: She's locked in this house and her dad's a psychopath.

Champ: Does she have a friend?

Zach Cooper: [referring to Hannah's dad] He's a big teddy bear.

Hannah: Don't take it personally. He doesn't really like anyone.

R.L. Stine: All the monsters I've ever created are locked inside these books. But when they open...

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GOOSEBUMPS (2016) IMAGES

GOOSEBUMPS (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

​First this is all about monsters and any kind of supernatural .After going to a new small town,the teenager boy Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach's comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange... he is a prisoner of his own imagination - the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it's suddenly up to Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Zach's friend Champ (Ryan Lee) they all do their best to back all of the monsters in the book.

GOOSEBUMPS (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 12 January 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

 ​This one is for the kids… There’s not much else that can be said about GOOSEBUMPS, the feature film adaptation of R.L. Stine’s young reader horror phenomenon that swept the planet almost two decades ago. Jack Black headlines the film as a fictional version of author Stine, who has hidden himself away from the world in a small, regional town in the small American state of Delaware on the East Coast of the country. Rob Letterman reteams with Black, having directed him in 2010’s GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, but the movie is let-down by a distinct lack of scares (even for younger viewers) as the CGI rendered monsters of Stine’s imagination fail to translate into anything closely resembling danger!

The story opens as Zach (Dylan Minnette) and his High School Vice-Principal Mum Gail (Amy Ryan) arrive in town; much to the chagrin of Zach, who expresses dismay at the posting his mother has taken and then embarrassment, as her first address the student body ends with an ill-advised “Twerking” reference. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Darren Lemke’s screenplay is going for the lowest common denominator and any hope that the scare-factor will drive the narrative is dashed with these opening scenes.

Surprisingly, Lemke’s screenplay is based on a story by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, a writing team who have done some reasonably decent material including Tim Burton’s ED WOOD, THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLYNT and Jim Carrey’s MAN ON THE MOON. Somewhere along the way, GOOSEBUMPS underwent a transformation with the combination of Letterman, Lemke and Black - presumably - deciding it would be better to try to find the broad humour of the story.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work.

There’s a modicum of fun to be had with some of what has been adapted into the feature film version of GOOSEBUMPS; but all for one exception, the movie unspools in a predictable fashion. The decision to make Stine’s creatures more animated than photo-realistic is a problem. It can only be assumed that the film’s producers were looking to capture the family market with their movie and have erred very much on the side of a PG rating to achieve that goal.

The performances are pretty pedestrian with the exception of Odeya Rush, who instills Hannah with a nice balance of charm and determination. Jack Black triple-times on GOOSEBUMPS; in addition to playing Stine, he also provides the voice of Slappy (Stine’s nemesis) and The Invisible Boy. Black’s take on Stine makes him largely unrelatable and unlikeable; which is a pretty major gamble, as he’s the film’s star.

Dylan Minnette doesn’t really sell Zach as strongly as he could and he comes off the weakest of the main players, whereas Ryan Lee manages to add some nerdy-humour as Champ and gets a big pay-off scene that’s fun (if a little predictable).

​There’s no doubt that GOOSEBUMPS had potential, but it suffers from predictability with a script that fails to reinvent R.L. Stine’s much loved stories for a contemporary audience.

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