R.L. Stine's manuscripts contain his monsters and are unsealed. How can they be re-sealed when they're freed?
The writing feels awkward and trite, with played-out "adults writing kids" energy. The characters aren't that rounded, the jokes are a bit stale or try too hard, and there's a bad plot point where a mean girl throws herself on the nerdy kid after he saves her life.
Jack Black as R.L. Stine is a blast. He's always fantastic and he carries the film with a volatile snobby persona. It's hilarious Stine allowed such a wacky portrayal of himself, but Black makes it super fun.
The monsters in the film are a highlight and a disappointment. The visual effects are good and there's great character animation that gives personality to the monsters and considers how their composition would affect their motion. However, the monsters feel reduced to generic spooks wearing Goosebumps faces. None of them really feel defined by the unique rules or identities of the characters in the books themselves; it's more like somebody looked at the covers of the books and assumed what the monsters were based on that. A few of the monsters weren't familiar to me or, when based on a book, didn't gel much with the book itself so I couldn't make the connection. Several iconic foes simply had no presence. The monsters aren't combated with the rules that applied to them, either, so the film doesn't feel so rewarding to fans of the books. Look at Slappy. Sure, he was written as a creepy evil puppet, but he was also defined by being a genuinely abusive figure who gaslit his victims by hiding his animate nature, and was beholden to an incantation that could wake him up and put him to sleep. None of that factors into this Slappy, who is just a creepy mastermind and apparently a dark reflection of Stine himself? There's also a plot hole of sorts because Slappy isn't the antagonist of the first book in his sub-trilogy, and the film could have made something of that instead of having him emerge from the first book. If Scream can remind audiences that Jason wasn't the first foe in his series, then Goosebumps can too. One plot twist does reward viewer knowledge of the series, and there are some Easter eggs, but the central threats feel like shallow adaptations.
On a conceptual level, I think the later Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark had a more favorable approach to the whole mega-crossover horror story thing— for most of them, the magic book device make the entire familiar narratives play out for real within the world, and thus the monster scenes play out the highlights of the classic stories and follow the patterns and rules the readers are familiar with. If this film was about Goosebumpsplots manifesting and not just de-characterized monsters, it'd be a lot better as a tribute.
This is a fun ride but not saying anything meaningful and fairly weak in terms of the mythos it adapts.
Film A funny creature feature but also awkwardly written and a shallow adaptation.
R.L. Stine's manuscripts contain his monsters and are unsealed. How can they be re-sealed when they're freed?
The writing feels awkward and trite, with played-out "adults writing kids" energy. The characters aren't that rounded, the jokes are a bit stale or try too hard, and there's a bad plot point where a mean girl throws herself on the nerdy kid after he saves her life.
Jack Black as R.L. Stine is a blast. He's always fantastic and he carries the film with a volatile snobby persona. It's hilarious Stine allowed such a wacky portrayal of himself, but Black makes it super fun.
The monsters in the film are a highlight and a disappointment. The visual effects are good and there's great character animation that gives personality to the monsters and considers how their composition would affect their motion. However, the monsters feel reduced to generic spooks wearing Goosebumps faces. None of them really feel defined by the unique rules or identities of the characters in the books themselves; it's more like somebody looked at the covers of the books and assumed what the monsters were based on that. A few of the monsters weren't familiar to me or, when based on a book, didn't gel much with the book itself so I couldn't make the connection. Several iconic foes simply had no presence. The monsters aren't combated with the rules that applied to them, either, so the film doesn't feel so rewarding to fans of the books. Look at Slappy. Sure, he was written as a creepy evil puppet, but he was also defined by being a genuinely abusive figure who gaslit his victims by hiding his animate nature, and was beholden to an incantation that could wake him up and put him to sleep. None of that factors into this Slappy, who is just a creepy mastermind and apparently a dark reflection of Stine himself? There's also a plot hole of sorts because Slappy isn't the antagonist of the first book in his sub-trilogy, and the film could have made something of that instead of having him emerge from the first book. If Scream can remind audiences that Jason wasn't the first foe in his series, then Goosebumps can too. One plot twist does reward viewer knowledge of the series, and there are some Easter eggs, but the central threats feel like shallow adaptations.
On a conceptual level, I think the later Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark had a more favorable approach to the whole mega-crossover horror story thing— for most of them, the magic book device make the entire familiar narratives play out for real within the world, and thus the monster scenes play out the highlights of the classic stories and follow the patterns and rules the readers are familiar with. If this film was about Goosebumps plots manifesting and not just de-characterized monsters, it'd be a lot better as a tribute.
This is a fun ride but not saying anything meaningful and fairly weak in terms of the mythos it adapts.