The house with a clock in its walls review

[Westside Steve]

The house with a clock in its walls
Universal
PG.                    105 min

Eli Roth has done some pretty strange films ranging from the extremely creepy horror series HOSTEL to the DEATH WISH remake,  to co-director of INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS along with Quentin Tarantino. Going over his eclectic backlog of work you probably won’t be able to draw a bead on this, a film version of John Bellaires' 1978 kids novel of the same name. Frankly I know nothing of the book but from what I hear it’s a cult favorite a bout a boy wizard. Fair enough. Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) is only 10 years old and an orphan who is life is turned upside down when he is sent to live with his uncle Jonathan in a very odd house in a very odd place called New Zebedee Michigan. To use the word odd for this house is something of an understatement. It is filled with magical things pieces of furniture that live and move secret passages magical books spirits and all manner of things that exist between the supernatural and the creepy. Not the least of which is Uncle Jonathan himself played by a guy I’m always happy to see , Jack Black. It’s not that I think Black is a great actor but he is a one-of-a-kind character. Unfortunately I don’t think it works all that well here as an earnest yet bumbling Warlock who is obsessed with finding and stopping an infernal clock hidden somewhere within the walls of the decrepit old mansion. From what we can gather the clock was placed there by the former owner , and evil or a walk named Izzard for some kind of Nefarious reason.  By the way Izard is Kyle MacLachlan  who you might remember from Twin Peaks . Another character in the old house is Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) with whom Uncle Jonathan carry’s on and inexplicable, though not particularly funny, feud. Now on top of his quest he find some self responsible to take the kid under his wing and teach him what he will need to know to eventually become a full-fledged sorcerer. Don’t forget though, the kid is still a kid and has to live in a kid’s world dealing with classmates in a normal school. The crisis comes when Lewis tries to impress one of the cool kids by opening up a forbidden book of spells and accidentally…  Well it would spoil the fun if I told you what he did but that’s when the already crazy movie takes an even crazier turn. As far as the film goes I thought it a little bit slow relying on the effects, which aren’t even that spectacular, for 2/3 of the screen time before the action picked up a little bit. Also again even though I like Jack Black I didn’t get the bickering between him and Mrs. Zimmerman, nor did I ever truly understand her motivation here. Vaccaro is a good little actor but again the character didn’t really seem to bond with the audience through either the wizard story or the classmates story.
C
WSS