HALLOWEEN REVIEW OF THE DAY: Little Monsters (1989)

Little Monsters is a confused little film that doesn't know whether it wanted be a light-hearted family comedy or an edgy comedy made for kids. Either way it unfortunately fails. The film is about a boy named Brian (Fred Savage) as he encounters and befriends and energetic but highly obnoxious monster named Maurice (Howie Mandel) who is from a world where other monsters reside under the beds of children around the world. Though nothing new about a world existing of monsters, but I have to be honest it is creative...if only the world they lived in was creative! When you look at the setting of the so called "monster world" you swear you are looking at nothing but a bunch of cardboard boxes, lighting that only consist of dark colors like red, dark blue, maybe purple, and cheap SFX. I know that it is supposed to be the world of the monsters and you expect it to look gloom and untidy but this was during the 80s were family fantasy movies really went to the extra mile to set up their settings like The Neverending Story and Return to OZ. They could have done so much with this world, they could have expanded it, add stuff like cities, forests, and castles, creative and enjoyable monster characters, top it off with a well established villain or force the protagonists have to confront, and you got a fun family movie, with monsters which kids love! I hate how they just threw away all the potential and creativity they could have had with this movie and just gave us something really mediocre and unpleasant. I don't want to wrap up yet, there are still several things to discuss, such as the main charatcers. Let's start off with the boy Brian, this kid is a total bore. Which is funny because I don't think Fred Savage was that bad of a child actor personally, I believe he can sell. I've seen him in several episodes of  his hit TV show The Wonder Years and he's not half bad. The character is just written horribly, and not only is he a bore but he is also a little brat. He complains how nobody understands him, and the troubles of moving and making new friends, when in reality he treats everyone like dirt. When he starts to hang out with the monster they go around to different houses to play pranks, AND THEY ARE TERRIBLE PRANKS! They're not even funny enough to make you chuckle, there's putting plastic wrap over a toilet seat and even replacing a kid's apple juice with urine. How is that hilarious, that's unpleasant, gross, and immature. To shame that this was put in a family film, something marketed towards children. We need to inspire them, not tell them that these horrible acts are funny. The monster, Maurice played by Howie Mandel, just seems fake and tired. I want to say he's exactly like Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice, but where Beetlejuice was an actually funny and enjoyable character and the movie he's from was actually made more for adults, plus he ends up being the antagonist, we are stuck with an obnoxious camera mugger whose only solution in defeating the main villain is by burning him with a flame thrower, not like how many good heroes in movies do with wit or a lesson or moral they have learned. In fact there is no moral or message to be brought from this travesty. Just a meaning less time waster for children, what a complete waste. Nothing about this movie is pleasant, there is actually a scene where a bunch of monsters are scaring a baby, you know an infant, which unsurprisingly is pretty hard to watch, the kid's parents are getting a divorce and nothing is done to resolve it (yeah what a FAMILY movie!), the characters are a bore, unlikeable, and just horribly written, there is little to no linear story, the climax and villains are thrown in at the last minute with no development or build up, the setting is dull and disappointing, and overall that's the word to describe this movie disappointing. Talk about a premise that had so much potential and a limitless amount of creativity that could have been put in, but the final product turned out to be a total train wreck. Definitely a skip on the Halloween playlist. Grade: CR