REVIEW:
Goosebumps is kind of a fun movie. It’s nothing special, or incredibly memorable or anything like that, but all things considered, it’s a pretty decent film. First off, the premise about making a movie about famed author R.L. Stine is great. This is the guy who not only wrote the Goosebumps series for kids, but also the Fear Street series for teenagers. He loves writing horror books for young people. And most times what we would get is one of his books turned into a movie, with the potential to adapt the next book as a sequel of sorts if this first one was successful. Well, instead of going that usual route, this movie isn’t about one of his books, but instead it’s about all of them. It’s a giant mashup of all of R.L. Stones characters from the series. A greatest hits of sorts.
R.L. Stine, played by Jack Black here, isn’t exactly the star of the movie. He’s probably the third lead after a new kid who moves into town and then the girl next door who this kid is infatuated with. That leads the boy to go over to her house, where he meets her nutcase father (Stine,) and accidentally unleashes the first monster from one of this books. One creature ends up releasing all the others, and the next thing you know, there’s chaos in the streets. None of this is anything new, but what does work about the movie are the little creative touches. An abandoned amusement park in the middle of the woods, for example. Or a twist about one of the lead characters that you really don’t see coming. It all makes for a pretty enjoyable experience.