Goosebumps (2015)

By the time the Goosebumps books hit shelves, I was already outside of the target demographic, so I knew that I was not the target audience for this film. That still didn't stop me from enjoying the movie. No, what hurt my enjoyment of the movie was the utterly annoying comic relief character, Champ. Yes, his parents named him Champion because even his parents knew that he was going to be a shitty sidekick in an otherwise enjoyable film.

The film revolves around a kid who moves a small suburban town after his father dies. The kid meets his next door neighbors, a girl and her father, the latter is played by Jack Black (although I think it would have been more interesting if Jack Black played the former.). The kid and his sidekick, Champ, go into the girl's house after seeing something they think is bad, only to find manuscripts of all of R.L. Stine's books. After unlocking one of the books, a monster is let loose on the neighborhood.

You know what? I am terrible at hashing out plot descriptions. i always thought that critics were good at it, but I found out later that they were given the plot descriptions, as well as a host of other things about the movie, from the studio. So I am not going to get into going over the plot.

The question is: Did I like the movie? Yes. The movie is way better than I had hoped. The story is good until you realize that they entire movie moves forward by breaking the rules the movie has set up for it's own universe. When the kid and Champ find the manuscripts, they remark that all of the books are locked and can only be opened with a key. Yet when the kids go chasing after the monster they unleashed, the camera goes back into the house to show us a book unlocking itself. If the book could unlock itself then why has it done so before?

Overlooking this cheat was difficult but I did and I found a movie that wanted to be a monster movie for kids and adults alike while paying an obscene amount of fan service in the process. The effects are very done and sometimes are actually kind of scary. The movie also has a good flow to it. We are not sitting there waiting for something to happen.

I would recommend Goosebumps to anyone who likes monster movies and whom doesn't have a stick up their ass about the movie being a kids movie. There are plenty of things here that adults can appreciate just as much as the kids. That Champ kid still sucks and is the only thing I hated about the film.