everyday is halloween: goosebumps [2015]

anna, nick and i went to the flicks to see this newest movie.  jack black plays r.l. stine, a writer of macabre children's books.  turns out the creatures in stine's books are real.  stine keeps these creatures locked inside their respective novels.  only he has the key.  stine is a hugely successful novelist, all the kids have read his books, but the writer disappeared from sight some time ago.  the reason is made manifest by lock and key.

stine has a teenage daughter, hannah.  who is home schooled, and seemingly shunted away from the rest of the world, bound as she is by the borders of her yard and home.

zach is a teenage boy new in town.  his father died a year earlier.  zach's mother just took a job as the high school vice-principal.  zach and mom move into the house next door to stine and hannah.

guess what happens next.  yep, zach accidently releases one of the monsters from stine's books, the abominable snowman.  that escape snowballs into all of stine's creatures escaping the covers of their stories.  soon the town is destroyed.

what to do?  take another guess.  i won't give it away.  because you know the movie will end well for all involved.

fans of r.l. stine's goosebumps books and TV shows should have a blast with this pic.  even stine himself makes a cameo.  i like stine, sure, but i'm a little more older than the intended audience.  besides, the movie wasn't made for me.  it was made for kids who grew up on stine's fictions.

which doesn't make it a bad movie.  for the flick is a typical hollywood bang up with lots of FX and explosions.  the creature CGI are first rate.  the werewolf is particularly nasty looking and lifelike.

what i liked about the movie is the evidence of the power of art, especially writing.  language is magic, but it is always practical.  stories are not only what we tell ourselves what we believe but stories are also what makes us who we are.  thus this film is predicated upon the power, even in its glossy hollywood bluster, of writing and reading.  the pen is proven, once again, that it is mightier than the monster.

boo