A retread of Home Alone, with Macauley Culkin replaced by a rodent.Seriously. Two bunglers (in this case, Nathan Lane and Lee Evans) try to lay claim to a home, inhabited by a resourceful mouse (played, equally, by live mice, animatronic mice and computer generated mice).
The bunglers try and trap, kill and otherwise rid themselves of the mouse so they can sell the house left to them by their father (the great William Hickey), who was in the string business. Of course, the mouse continually outsmarts the two brothers, who are the unwitting victims of their own traps and badly laid plans. Slapstick wackiness abounds.
Funny, right?
Uh-uh.
Nathan Lane can be incredibly gifted as a comic (see The Birdcage) or he can be positively horrible (see the eyesore known as Encore! Encore! on NBC, but do so at your own risk). But he deserves better than playing second fiddle to a CG mouse. Likewise for Lee Evans (who had a much better role - and gave a much better performance - as one of the would-be suitors to Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary). Mouse Hunt is a mishmash of occasionally neat setups with no real payoff. You see the jokes and you know exactly where they're headed, so maybe that's precisely why you don't find them funny.
The stunt casting of Christopher Walken is amusing at first, then you realize it's just Christopher Walken doing bored Christopher Walken. It's like he's imitating himself. Badly.
It's been done before, and it's been done better. Kids may dig on the pratfalls and slapstick, but it's basically an empty film.Skip it. Or watch until Hickey's character croaks, then rewind.
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