Luna Macwilliams, age 6, Chicago, il.- 10 stars. "I love this movie because there are real people and a real mouse and it's real-ly funny! I also like the mouse's secret tricks that the viewer will wonder-how did he do that? Check out the mouse swinging across a chasm on a light bulb chain! It's amazing!" Kris- I give this movie 8 stars. Luna, age 6, gave it 10 stars and I thought since this is a family film, one I might not have seen without her, she deserved a voice. She gives a lot of kids flicks 10 stars, but not all. I thought the film captured the perfect feel of a cartoon, but done in live action. There are a few films that come to mind from the past that pulled off the cartoon feel, the Coen's Hudsucker Proxy, or more so even, Raising Arizona, Tim Burton's early films and a few others. None may be shot as perfectly in cartoon style as Mousehunt however, and none are as perfectly suited for kids age 3 to 10. Some of its visual delights could be called cinematic bliss, as great as anything procured by Welles or Lean. There is a fade from a white plastic home on a white cake that dissolves into a white home on a snowy white hill that should be shown in every film school. There is use of shadows and water that would make Ingmar Bergman proud. And of course, there is the mouse. The effects and photography are done so well that he convinced the kids he was real, and really smart and acrobatic. Lee Evans and Nathan Lane are perfectly cast as black and white characters. They don't look like they're related, Evan's too nice and Lane is too mean, but hey, it's a kids movie. Their characters work perfectly in the cartoon world they inhibit. They make you laugh, no matter how old you are. Christopher Walken plays an exterminator and it was right before he became overexposed in every other hip movie made. His best dialogue comes off-screen from a tape recorder. Walken could be just as funny on radio I guess, it's all in his verbiage. So rent or buy this for the family. It's one of those few gems that will have you all laughing at the same joke.
