Review: The House With a Clock in Its Walls #MonsterMondays

Review: The House With a Clock in Its Walls

Rating: 12A

Cast:

Jack Black ... Jonathan Barnavelt

Cate Blanchett ... Florence Zimmerman

Owen Vaccaro ... Lewis Barnavelt

Kyle MacLachlan ... Isaac Izard

Summary: A young orphan named Lewis Barnavelt aids his magical uncle in locating a clock with the power to bring about the end of the world.

I wanted to see this film when I caught the trailer, and I can very much say, I was not disappointed.

Apart from the superb cast, this film has everything we could want from am urban fantasy film. There's action, adventure, peril and a great bad guy.

The film is set in the 1950s in a small town in the USA. It's a great place for such a plot because it's a little claustrophobic where lots of people know your business, but it's also the kind of place where people might whisper about the eccentric people, but they would never say anything to their face. In fact it is the perfect place for Lewis' (Owen Vaccaro) uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) and his closest friend Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett).

Lewis is the slightly nerdy kid, with a very big brain, trying to fit in to a new school and deal with the tragedy of having lost his parents. He's the perfect protagonist for the strange magical world he is thrown into that starts to give him a place to belong and new things to learn.

Owen Vaccaro gives a great performance (mostly) and makes us believe every step he takes. There is one scene where he has to cry that felt like the worst stage school performance ever, but that was the only blip.

Jack Black is absolutely brilliant as Uncle Jonathan, eccentric, free spirited and in a superb game of who can insult the other better without being crude or horrible with Florence Zimmerman. He has a touch of the same self-doubt that Lewis carries with him too, and both of them overcome it together.

Cat Blanchett is as fabulous as always as Florence, with her penchant for purple and a spirit damaged almost beyond repair by the Nazis in WWII. She too has a journey to make from the beginning of the story to the end, which is nuanced and well conceived.

Then we have our baddie, Isaac Izard as played by Kyle MacLachlan, who is, in fact, dead at the beginning of the film. You would think this might cause issues with him being the big bad, but, like Voldemort, what is a little thing like death to a powerful warlock? He's evil and creepy and just as broken as most of the other characters, which makes him a sad character too.

This is a fill with layers. Every character carries something with them so they are far from perfect. Each could easily have swapped places and ended up with bad guy with what they have been through. The war broke some, tragedy and personal loss broke the others and they all put themselves back together in different ways, becoming more powerful within themselves as they do.

There is a lot of magical lore in this film, but it doesn't throw it at us like an encyclopedia, it does a great job of showing it instead. It leaves questions, but they are not troubling, annoying questions, they are spaces for the imagination to grow. The film has a great balance.

The only problem I had with it was some of the CGI. There is a bit at the end which just made me shudder, and not in a good way. I think they were going for freaky, but they mostly hit bad. I won't say more because it would be a spoiler, but it is very easy to spot. Given that the rest of the CGI is superb and it suggests it was a production decision mistake, not a reflection of the artists creating it.

So. all in all, a great movie. I have the blu-ray on pre-order and intend to watch it many more times. It is a film that is going to become one of my go to favourites I believe.

All images courtesy of IMDB.

Have you seen the film? What did you think? What was your favourite part? If you haven't seen it yet, have I convinced you to give it a try?