Arnie Cunningham is an awkward, nerdy teenager with one friend, football player Dennis Guilder. He's consistently bullied, humiliated, and threatened until he finds Christine, a cherry red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury being sold by an old man. It's in terrible shape, but Arnie vows to fix it up over time himself. Christine goes from hobby to obsession as his demeanor and style change. Arnie simply isn't the same anymore and adopts a cruel, detached attitude to everyone around him. Dennis grows concerned as Arnie keeps pushing more and more people away in favor of his car.
Christine is a strange film with some of the best effects and visuals I've seen. The best part of the film is the title character, a beautiful 50's car with a vibrant color and a bad attitude. The first scene shows the car being made, leaving one worker grievously injured and another dead. This car is insane. It can cause people to choke, completely destroy itself only to regenerate, and move any of its own parts. There are some unique kills like crushing a man sitting in the car, ramming another into a corner until he's crushed, and blowing up an entire gas station. My favorite scenes with her are the regeneration scene and the gas station scene. The car goes from completely trashed by Arnie's enemies to looking brand shiny new again like magic. Thefiery gas station scene has a nightmarish flaming Christine going after her enemies doggedly until they are dead, no matter what her physical condition is. Christine also triggers obsession in her owners, causing them to love her above all others and become cruel to everyone else.
I found the characters and ending to be lacking, which surprised me. With the car featured heavily, I felt that the characters were only a vehicle to showing what the car could do. Arnie is completely detached by the middle of the film, but his supposed best friend doesn't really seem that concerned about him. The human villains are flat and don't seem to do anything else except threaten people. Dennis is flatly good and serves to be the only normal person to be the foil to Arnie's transformation. The ending is especially strange with a weirdly sexual bulldozer versus Christine fight with an abrupt cut to Christine's fate. For such a cool villain, this was disappointing. Christine is overall a good film, but these aspects really brought it down for me.
My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins
* Monster House (2006)
DJ spies on his crotchety old neighbor Mr. Nebbercracker, who screams at anyone who even approaches his house. DJ's parents are gone for the weekend, so he and his friend Chowder get into some trouble trying to get a ball back from Mr. Nebbercracker's lawn. The old man has a heart attack, leaving the house abandoned. DJ gets a call from the abandoned house and he eventually sees someone attacked by the house that is revealed to be a giant monster that seeks to eat people. No adults believe them because it looks normal for them, so what can these kids do to save their neighborhood?
Monster House is an animated film that was created in a really awkward time technologically. The animation has a strong uncanny valley quality that makes all the characters look odd. The child characters are pretty annoying except for Jenny, an enterprising young girl selling Halloween candy just before the day. DJ is kind of nerdy while Chowder is more silly, but they seemed a little too similar to me. The older characters like Z, her boyfriend Bones, and Skull are not quite seen as adults, but seemed as silly as the child characters.. For the first half of the movie, the only part that I found interesting was the monster house that could look normal one moment and open it's maw and eyes the next. Everything from the lawn to every part of the house can move so it can have it's favorite snack: kids.
* spoilers *
What makes this film really wonderful is the ending. The house turns out to be possessed by Mr. Nebbercracker's beloved wife, Constance the Giant. She was in a circus freakshow until she fell in love and moved away. He was building the house that would eventually become possessed by her. On Halloween, some kids harrass her due to her size and she loses her footing, tragically dying by falling into the basement. The whole reason the house wants to eat kids is the constant abuse Constance experienced as a sideshow and as an obese woman. Her husband pretends to hate children in order to save them. I don't blame her for the pain and anger she feels or him for his blind devotion to his wife. This backstory is surprisingly deep and heartfelt. I wish the ending were as sensitive, but the house is blown up with dynamite. Monster House has surprising depth, but most of the characters and the ending don't match that depth.
My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins
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