11/9/15 Goosebumps (movie)

    We went and saw Goosebumps Friday night, mostly because Chubs wanted to and he asked Boy to get us tickets.  Surprisingly, Boy wanted to also watch it and decided to join us, along with his friends.  The movie was pretty good in that kid movie cliche kind of way.  Jack Black plays the R.L. Stine character, he is the writer of the Goosebumps line.  A bunch of scary stories that exist in stores, Wife was saying Boy read a couple growing up, Chubs is not interested.  Anyway, next door to R.L. Stine is an empty house, where the new boy and his mom move to.  Very quickly, the pretty girl next door starts talking to the boy, and Mr. Stine tells him to beat it and not make friendly with the daughter.  Of course, next scene, pretty girl is back to talking to the boy, Stine again threatens him.  The boy then sees what appears like child abuse, a lot of yelling and flailing about, he calls the cops, a couple of small town cliche cops come, totally inept.  Of course, everyone thinks the boy is crazy.

    What is a boy to do?  Break into the house of course.  He has already made a friend at school and invites him along, the boy f course can pick a lock better than anybody and they find tthemselves in Mr. Stine's library.  He has the full collection of his works on a bookshelf, each one has its own lock.  The books have nothing to do with the girl, but can they leave them alone?  No.  The boy opens one, just to appease the other boy, who comes along mostly as a distraction, as he adds nothing but confusion and the screamings of a little girl, packaged as a little boy.  Opening the book, then becomes the worst thing they could have done.  It is a book with the abominable snowman and he escapes from the book.  The girl finally shows up, better late than never, and goes about trying to clean up their mess.  The snowman bolts and in their chaos, another book gets rattled around and it opens too.

    Eventually, they corner the snowman in the locaal ice rink, Mr. Stine shows up and saves the day, does a lot of yelling, and takes the boys home where he discovers his worst creation, a ventriloquist dummy has escaped.  He is smarter than an average scary guy and disappears with all his books.  he then haphazardly trows books out his window as he drives this totally bad ass creepy car.  He is simultaneously opening the books and burning them, so the monsters can't be captured back in.  Mr. Stine is thinking of giving up, when the boys give him an idea to write a new story where all the mosters are rounded up and conquered.  He has only to find his trusty typewriter, which he has given to the school as a gift, the school has it in a glass case as a sort of local treasure.

    I don't want to ruin the end, and I did kind of zone out and fall asleep, although this is me, the story was good and entertaining.  I was a little caught by the young girl's pretty face, and was thinking if Mila Kunis had a younger sister, as soon as the movie finished, Wife said she looked like a younger Mila Kunis as well.  I also thought this was the perfect role for Jack Black as he has that face of serious, but not really, and he does seem more comfortable in a kid's world, thinking of School of Rock.  I personally did fall asleep, but that is a bit unfair, we had gone to Olive Garden at 6:30pm and ate with some friends, then went home, by 9:00pm.  The meal made me sleepy, told Wife I would lay down for 30 minutes, then they woke me at 9:30pm.  I did not recuperate, I was still sleepy.  The movie was cool, if you can say that for a kid's movie.