The Monster Squad

Monster Squad directed by a Fred Dekker but writing by Shane Black who wrote all four Lethal Weapon movies and directed Iron Man 3.

80’s nostalgia night but my wife bailed on this movie about half way through it, can’t say I blame her either.  I’ve got to admit it’s not as good I remember it when I was kid.  This movie just tries too hard to be Goonies but is nowhere near as good as that movie.  Frankenstein is basically Sloth.  The fat kid in Squad is Chunk.  The cool kid is Mouth.  The main character is Mikey.  I mean they are missing the big brother, Data, and a few other things but other than that this movie is trying to be Goonies.  From how the kids relate to creating the sense of wonder that Goonies captured to well.  It tries so hard that it’s not as fun to watch today as it was when I was kid.  But I’ll give Goonies one thing, it’s still a pretty good film even now-a-days.  It’s got some memorably lines and really good villains.  Plus I think it fulfills every kid’s dream of finding buried treasure.  

Monster Squad doesn’t have the same kind of narrative drive that Goonies had.  It seemed to take itself too seriously with the whole end of the world scenario that just didn’t click this time around with me, as it did when I was kid.  For a movie with this many monsters in it, it should have been a lot more fun than it turned out being.  There was just something missing for the fun to be sucked out of this picture.  But I will give this movie one thing it’s not too long and the last twenty minutes or so just fly by as the movie finally gets fun as the Monster Squad finally starts doing some monster butt kicking.  It was fun to see the cool kid not crack under pressure, as he takes down two vampire chicks and the werewolf.  He didn’t crack under the pressure but stood up the challenge.  

It was interesting to see how much this movie had dated with the times.  From the clothes, to the language it was just a product of its time.  I mean the hard-nosed kid's clothes were so “not cool” that he was a constant distraction, instead of being hard-nosed.  This I found interesting because my son loves the movie The Explores and the hard-nosed kid in that movie is truly hard-nosed, and would beat the crap out of the cool kid in Monster Squad and yet that movie hasn’t dated nearly as much as this movie has.  Monster Squad just doesn’t seem to have the same kind of heart as Goonies and The Explores.  I think it definitely comes down to heart and along with a good storyline and some interesting characters.  Even after watching this movie last night I can't say really remember too many of the characters, but I can still recall most of the characters from Goonies and The Explores with ease.  Falls back on the old philosophy I've come to say about movies, and that is, no matter how bad or crazy the storyline is, good and interesting characters can move anything along.