I haven't done a review in a while, so over the weekend, I went out to see Goosebumps. For those who are new to Goosebumps or who wasn't born in the 90s, Goosebumps was children's horror book series penned by R.L. Stine. The books were scary. Really scary. The books launched a ton of spin-off book series like the Give Yourself Goosebumps books, which were almost as scary since you choose how the story goes, and a TV series, which was just as scary as the books. The books generated a ton or sales and money for R.L Stine and has stuck with a lot of people either as nostalgia or as we're still getting nightmares about evil lawn gnomes. Which is more than an apparent reason why there is finally a movie based off of the books and series, right? At first hearing that there would be a movie, I had two things run into my head. First excitement. I loved reading the books and watching the TV series growing up as a child so it's no shocker I would be stoked for this. Another thing was the notion of whether they would do justice to the series. To many of us, Goosebumps is in a part of of childhood memories. We grew up on this. We would like to see if things were done in a faithful way. Was it? Was it cool, of did it suck?
Story
Let's start off with story. The whole premise of the Goosebumps movie was that all of the monsters in R.L Stine's books are real due to him creating them with his super imagination.They are all unleashed on the town and it's up to him and a bunch of teenagers, who let the monsters out in the first place, to put them back before they ruin the town. The whole plot of the movie is almost like Jumanji for the millennials or better yet a nice little spin on the intro of the TV series. The pacing of the movie is a bit odd. The first half which introduces characters and set up their traits is a bit slow and it does lag on a bit. When the exciting stuff happens in the second half when the monsters are out and the protagonists have to go after them it's quick. I mean really quick. The first half felt longer than the second half. Also, what bummed me out were that there were some famous Goosebumps monsters that reduced to just cameo appearances, some that were used for promo. As many books Stine made you would've figured out that they would featured more than the ones they chose. One example was that they could've shown more of the monsters going on a rampage on the town and one of my favorites, the Haunted Mask, could've been that character making mischief attack people as the run from the chaos kinda like Gremlins. On a positive side there are some Easter eggs in the film. See if you can find them.
Comedy
As I stated earlier, Goosebumps stories were scary. People had nightmares about them. So what do you do when you have some of the scariest books of kid literature ever? You make a comedy out of them. I think you can say that the Goosebumps movie is a form of satire on the series. It pokes of its self. The monsters were portrayed in a sort of comical form as you would think they would be in the books. Overall, there were some jokes that worked and some that didn't and were forced. An example was all the scenes with the main protagonist's (Zach Cooper played by Dylan Minnette) mom played by Amy Ryan. They did try to do the cool mom thing but they couldn't. Perhaps they should watch Amy Poeler in Mean Girls and see how it's done. Jack Black is standard Jack Black, weird fat guy that does something funny once in a while, like in almost every film he's in. Take that as you may. The highlight of the film's comedy was Ryan Lee. He basically stole every scene he was in and was gold.
Final Verdict
Goosebumps was alright for what it was overall, a kids movie. It was good, but it could've been great. Some jokes were great, some could've been better. They had a lot of material to work with and utilized than the stuff they used. Despite that it was sorta enjoyable. Audience beware, you're in for a okay scare. It gets a 3 out of 5.
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