Cindy Prascik's Review of The House With a Clock in Its Walls

Dearest Blog: Though the weekend cinema offered little of any promise, Friday I headed up to Marquee Cinemas for The House With a Clock in Its Walls.

 

Spoiler level here will be mild, nothing you wouldn't know from the trailers.

 

A boy comes to live with his uncle in a creepy old house that holds a dangerous secret.

 

Mama always said, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." While that might not be *entirely* possible, we'll start with the positives here. The House With a Clock in Its Walls looks gorgeous. The score and cinematography set an eerie, magical tone that briefly gave me hope the film might be better than I anticipated. Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing, even punching well below her weight class, and, though the execution fails, the story itself is reasonably solid. The negatives, starting with the obvious: Kid actors are a crapshoot. Very few are good; more often you just hope they aren't bad enough or featured enough to be distracting. Owen Vaccaro is both bad enough and featured enough to be distracting, and Jack Black is more annoying than quirky or amusing as his oddball uncle. The last quarter of the movie features some inexplicably hokey effects, and, while the humor is rarely crass, a handful of bodily-function jokes aren't funny and certainly don't elevate the whole. The picture hadn’t reached its halfway point before the only clock I cared about was the one that would tell me it was over.

 

The House With a Clock in Its Walls runs 104 minutes and is rated PG for "thematic elements, including sorcery, some action, scary images, rude humor, and language."

 

The House With a Clock in Its Walls represents a sad misfire on what should have become a Halloween-season classic. 

 

Of a possible nine Weasleys, The House With a Clock in Its Walls gets four.

 

Until next time...