TheRetroCritic

Tom Hanks and Shelley Long star in The Money Pit , a Steven Spielberg-produced comedy from 1986. The film sees a couple get a good deal on a house before realising it's literally falling apart. Much like their relationship, the house is slowly but surely collapsing but it's also being renovated and while this metaphor isn't too subtle it completely works here. The plot may not sound all that appealing but the film itself is a lot of fun as the ridiculously precarious house leads to some genuinely funny slapstick moments. Highlights include a long stretch during which Hanks is literally stuck in-between floors, the hilarious sudden breakdown of what seemed like a perfectly usable kitchen, some paint-induced catastrophe on scaffolding and Hanks' priceless reaction to a bathtub bursting through down to another floor. The Money Pit does feel like an old-fashioned screwball comedy crossed with wacky antics the likes of Charlie Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy would have

After The Polar Express , one of the weirdest-looking animations of recent times, Robert Zemeckis then decided to (wisely) go down the Pixar route and gave up on trying to get his characters to look as real as possible, instead keeping them stylized and cartoonish to a certain extent. This worked out ok for A Christmas Carol and this earlier, Halloween-themed effort which he produces. Monster House sees a group of 3 kids find out that the house across the street, where a scary old man lives, is not only haunted but alive and literally attacking people if they get too close. It's an odd but kinda genius take on the slasher genre as our serial killer isn't even flesh and blood but wood and brick! I love the design of the house, by the way, director Gil Kenan ( City Of Ember ) finds a whole bunch of clever ways to make it into a real threat for our characters: its walls become teeth, the trees around it become its arms and hands, it swallows anything that lands on its front