MOUSE HUNT (43)

Directed by: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Christopher Walken, Maury Chaykin

The Pitch: Two brothers stand to gain a fortune, if only they can rid an old house of its rodent problem - one small and resourceful mouse.

Theo Sez: Alternately witty and raucous, with a couple of pauses for the unpleasantly grotesque (including the great William Hickey - to whom the film is dedicated - looking shockingly skeletal in his final role) : the witty - or at least zany - bits include a few Rube Goldberg-type, domino-effect gags (like a stray twine of string that ends up destroying an entire factory), the magnificent Chaykin as an imperious millionaire, and such details as a dead eccentric's legacy to his sons (a ceramic egg, a collection of spoons and a half-box of Cuban cigars). The raucous bits include everything else, property-damage slapstick a la HOME ALONE albeit with flashes of cartoonish imagination (a piano plays an impromptu tune as cat and mouse chase each other underneath its cover). Characterisation is iffy, with Lane seemingly stuck between personae, twirling his tie in homage to Oliver Hardy (with Evans a rather charmless Stan Laurel) but also required to come on like a fast-talking hustler ; the effects involving the mouse, however (real? CGI? animatronic?), are quite amazing.