Mouse Hunt Full Movies

[Lilly Solo]

Frequentcomedic pratfall-style violence. An exterminator gets brutally dragged (and somewhat bloodied). Cartoon-style mayhem; Three Stooges-style head-bashing with frying pans and other household wares. One brother points a loaded shotgun at the other's face.

A man's clothes unravel in a pratfallish "accident" in a factory; when he runs into his office with giant balls of string covering his private parts, he finds his wife on the desk wearing lingerie. When a mouse falls into a woman's cleavage, a man tries to catch the mouse by sticking his hand down the front of her dress; her female friend has a man stick his hand down her dress to copy her.

"Bastard," "hell," "son of a bitch." Some sexual innuendo: talk of "making love like in nature films," a vicious cat described as "one mean pussy," and, when a mouse crawls into the crotch region of a character's pants, he screams "Get it out!" repeatedly as his brother is unzipping his fly.

Parents need to know that Mouse Hunt is a 1997 movie filled with unrelenting comedic pratfall-style violence. The two lead characters use a variety of implements to try to kill a mouse, including a shotgun and a nail gun. The mouse fills the house with gas later and blows the brothers sky-high. In the opening scene, the two brothers drop their father's coffin at the top of the church stairs, resulting in the corpse flying out of the coffin and into a manhole. There are some moments of inappropriate humor: The two lead characters are covered in excrement after accidentally destroying the sewer line with a vacuum, and the exterminator they hire ends up flat on his back with the mouse defecating on his mouth. This same exterminator eats a piece of mouse excrement to determine its diet. Early in the film, the mayor vomits a cockroach while eating in a fancy restaurant. There also are some moments of subtle and not-so-subtle sexual innuendo: A character talks of "making love like in nature films," the greedy wife of one of the lead characters appears in his office in lingerie, and the pursuit of the mouse leads to the two lead characters sticking their hands down the dresses of two women, and, later, unzipping the fly of one of the characters as he screams "Get it out!" There's also occasional profanity ("hell," "son of a bitch," "bastard"). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.

In the vivacious 1997 movie MOUSE HUNT, Nathan Lane and Lee Evans are hapless brothers out to rid their house of a very shrewd mouse. Anyone who's dealt with mice on the loose in a home knows how pesky they can be. That's part of what makes Mouse Hunt fun; you can't help pitying the poor Smuntz brothers, who go to wild extremes trying to rid themselves of an elusive rodent. Kids will side with the mouse, of course, because it's cute and furry and performs some spectacular stunts (thanks to convincing and sparingly used computer-generated effects).

Although something of a Home Alone retread, Mouse Hunt has far more brains, heart, and style, which will endear it to adults as well as young viewers. Take heed of the PG rating for excessive cartoon-style violence. About two-thirds of the way through it takes an excessively cruel turn, when the mouse floods the house with gas fumes and blows the brothers sky-high. Kids will eat it up, but parents may wince.

Casting Christopher Walken as an exterminator is just one of many inspired touches that gives this movie its adult appeal. William Hickey is also fine -- in one of his last performances -- as frail old Rudolph Smuntz, whose somber portrait keeps changing expression after he passes on.

Take Home Alone, put a small rodent in the place of Macaulay Culkin, add loads of gags and some excellent set pieces, and you've got a corking comedy from DreamWorks SKG, the home of Steven Spielberg. Yes, it is a mouse movie with nothing to do with Disney.

On the death of their father (William Hickey), brothers Ernie and Lars Smuntz (Lane and Evans) inherit his string factory and the deeds to a property neither brother realised the old man owned. Though dilapidated, it turns out the house is an architectural rarity worth millions, so they decide to do it up and sell it off to the highest bidder.

There is a problem, however - one little mouse with one big attitude. Lane as the greedy schemer and the timid, gangly Evans make a good slapstick team, with great support from a cast of larger-than-life characters including Walken as the exterminator who approaches his task with military precision and outrageous hardware. But the star is, naturally, the mouse, stealing the show not just with his bewhiskered cuteness, but with an unflinching resourcefulness as he foils the hapless brothers at every turn.

The stunts - by both man and mouse - are terrific, particularly a set piece in which the brothers fill an entire room with traps, only to see the mighty rodent get yet another one over them with his acrobatic antics. The "mousecam" POV dashes around the house are breathtaking, particularly one in which the furry one endeavours to escape the nails being hammered into the skirting board (death by impalement seems inevitable). Grown-ups should be warned, though, tiny bottom lips may quiver whenever it looks like the brave wee mouse has had his chips...

A tad overlong, and with an unnecessarily tidy ending, Mousehunt nevertheless has the wit and pace to keep adults laughing while the children are enthralled by the spectacular travails of the invincible mouse.

NC (vo): There was good buzz around it, as it was founded by powerhouses, Spielberg, Katzenberg and that third one, but it wasn't until three years later that films were finally being put out. The first was an action film with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, the second an Oscar drama directed by Spielberg, and the third was a kids' movie, directed by Tim Burton with David Fincher's Crayons... (An image of a box of Crayola crayons is superimposed, all green, with a label on it reading: "DAVID FINCHER CRAYONS", is shown, before we cut to a shot of...) ...Gore Verbinski. How was it?

NC (vo): We start off with a funeral...so again, (The hanging scene from Pirates is superimposed a second time) not a huge difference to how he gets things going...as it looks like Rudolf Smuntz is the man who died. He's played by William Hickey. In fact, this is the last film he ever worked on. And boy, do they know how to pay a man proper respect!

(As he turns around, Lars accidentally loses his grip on the egg, and it is flung across the room, bounces off the attorney's head, then bounces off the desk and lands on the floor, shattering to bits. Lars is stunned by what just happened)

NC (vo; deadpan): Wow, how did your slapstick go from flinging a corpse at a funeral into a sewer to egg-bouncing? (A shot of Evel Knievel is superimposed) That's like Evel Knievel following up jumping ten buses with...

(Unfortunately, the Mayor is unknowingly served the cockroach and bites his head off. When his children realizes the headless cockroach is still there, they become grossed out, and as the Mayor freaks out and spits out the cockroach head, the cockroach's head crawls away. This causes him to have a heart attack from the shock and fall over unconscious, much to his wife's shock. The reporters crowd around him)

(The dying Mayor is taken away in an ambulance while the restaurant closes, much to Ernie's sorrow. Meanwhile, at the string factory, Lars is approached by two men working for Zeppco International, but picks a piece of string, that is in his pocket to set off a memory)

(She dramatically slams Lars' suitcase shut, and the next scene shows Lars standing outside April's door in the snow, which she has slammed shut so hard that a Christmas wreath hanging on the door falls to the ground with a crash)

(Ernie and Lars, now down on their luck, trudge down the street. They spot a homeless man and then spot two women walking past them. Ernie greets them, but is disappointed when they ignore him)

NC (vo): ...and both of them try to figure out what to do. (The brothers look through the window of a bakery to see a cake on display reading "Welcome Home", with a model of a mansion placed on top of it. We then dissolve to a shot of the exact same house, the one their father left them, that the brothers drive up to) In a pretty damn impressive transition...

(Lars tosses a quarter in the air. It lands on the floor on its side and spins around. Ernie shines his flashlight on it. The quarter stops spinning and stays upright, not falling over. The brothers stare at each other)

(They open the box and a swarm of moths fly out, startling the brothers. They recoil, and Ernie accidentally puts his head through a painting of a woman in the corner, right where the woman's head is. Another laugh track is heard as we cut again to the Fuller House episode in question)

(Cut back to the movie, as, to a thunder crash, a bolt of lightning flashes, illuminating a huge scary shadow, which freaks the brothers out. But then when they look, they notice where the shadow is coming from and try to calm down)

(The brothers hear another noise coming from the ceiling above, so Lars lifts Ernie up into the ceiling to look. Ernie's head smashes through the ceiling, and sees a mouse that then scurries off)

(The scene of Lars bumping his head is shown a third time, this time with a laugh track, as we cut to yet another clip of an episode of Fuller House, showing off a baby there. Back to the movie, the brothers see the mouse again)

(Ernie sets up a mouse trap with an olive as bait, but the next morning, they see the mouse has snapped the trap without getting killed. They then find the mouse and chase him, Ernie carrying a broom and Lars carrying a meat tenderizer)

(As Lars is hammering a new plank into the house, the head comes off and hits a bucket full of panels, which in turn falls over off the roof. Lars notices the head of his hammer is missing and then hears the sound of Ernie yelling. Lars looks over to see the bucket of planks, which have fallen on Ernie and knocked him to the ground, with the bucket on his head)

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