What amazes me about the previous comments made is that none of them mention Laurel and Hardy.
This movie is clearly a homage to L&H, or should that be "attempt at trying to imitate L&H"?
The scene in the square, where the fatter, moustached Smuntz brother waves the ends of his tie at the women across the way is a straight lift from Hardy, and there are many other places where the scene is, shall we say, uncannily like a Laurel and Hardy scene.
Since film-making has advanced a little since their day, there is the opportunity to have a lot more special effects, and the mouse which is the bane of the Smuntz brothers' lives can be filmed doing lots more interesting tricks. Actually, the mouse chases are more obviously copied from Tom & Jerry cartoons, but the ease with which they fit in makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that they'd have had those sequences in the Laurel and Hardy movies if they could.
The big difference between this and a L&H movie, though, is also a product of "progress". Because it is made with the child audience in mind, it is more crudely drawn and lacks finesse.
It's perhaps difficult these days to do slapstick with the same innocence that Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy managed, and so it inevitably seems disappointing, but Mouse Hunt makes a pretty good stab.
This movie is clearly a homage to L&H, or should that be "attempt at trying to imitate L&H"?
The scene in the square, where the fatter, moustached Smuntz brother waves the ends of his tie at the women across the way is a straight lift from Hardy, and there are many other places where the scene is, shall we say, uncannily like a Laurel and Hardy scene.
Since film-making has advanced a little since their day, there is the opportunity to have a lot more special effects, and the mouse which is the bane of the Smuntz brothers' lives can be filmed doing lots more interesting tricks. Actually, the mouse chases are more obviously copied from Tom & Jerry cartoons, but the ease with which they fit in makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that they'd have had those sequences in the Laurel and Hardy movies if they could.
The big difference between this and a L&H movie, though, is also a product of "progress". Because it is made with the child audience in mind, it is more crudely drawn and lacks finesse.
It's perhaps difficult these days to do slapstick with the same innocence that Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy managed, and so it inevitably seems disappointing, but Mouse Hunt makes a pretty good stab.