![]() Gesturing grandly and delivering each line as if onstage, Jonathan introduces Lewis to the relatively elegant Mrs. Lewis’ new guardian is a kimono-wearing kook - and self-described warlock - who conducts himself like some kind of corny late-19th-century magician, complete with greased-back hair and penciled-on beauty mark. His “House” is big on atmosphere, full of doors with big brass locks and oversize rooms that intimidate 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro, both miscast and badly directed as someone Bellairs described as chubby and awkward), who has been sent to New Zebedee, Mich., after his parents’ death to live with his uncle Jonathan (Black, who earns laughs with the arch of an eyebrow or the peculiar enunciation of a word taken at random). If the idea was to give 8- to 12-year-olds a bit of a fright, maybe even to inspire a few mild nightmares, without doing any permanent damage, Roth is certainly up to the task. One might consider him too extreme for the assignment, yet Roth adapts his skills quite nicely to this project’s PG rating, delivering minor jolts where appropriate, and leaning on “Goosebumps” star Jack Black to leaven things with comedy throughout. That explains why “House” - adapted by Eric Kripke from John Bellairs’ 1973 kid-lit classic - boasts as its director Eli Roth, the hard-R gorehound responsible for “Cabin Fever” and the “Hostel” movies. ![]() The Amblin-produced “House” may as well have been conceived as a throwback to what the label once represented: Like 1985’s darkly hallucinogenic “Young Sherlock Holmes” (whose trippy CG stained-glass sequence was a visual-effects breakthrough for its time), what presents itself as an ominous mystery is in fact a horror movie for kids. ![]() Looking back, Amblin Entertainment - that Steven Spielberg-hatched shingle responsible for such films as “Gremlins” and “The Goonies” - may as well have defined the concept of movie magic for a generation, only to see it watered down by all the computer-generated juvenile thrill rides that followed. Yet another in a pipeline of vaguely Harry Potter-esque wish-fulfillment fantasies, Universal’s clunky but not entirely un-charming “ The House With a Clock in Its Walls” makes enchantment so easy - and so ubiquitous - as to feel almost ordinary, being the all-too-familiar story of an orphan who picks up some nifty tricks when he goes to live in a house that ticks. “Movie magic.” That expression used to mean something quite different back when filmmakers relied on practical effects to make the impossible seem possible, and not every YA protagonist had dormant supernatural powers just waiting to be discovered. ![]()
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