On Sept. 21, “The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” a fun, family comedy, premiered in theatres.
“The House with a Clock in Its Walls” follows Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), a newly orphaned boy who has to move in with his estranged uncle Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black) after his parents’ unfortunate death by car accident. Lewis is relocated to New Zebedee, Michigan where he only wishes to make some new friends and that his uncle will be nice enough to him.
However, he gets much more than that. Lewis walks into his new home only to find that there are clocks crowding all the surfaces, ticking away. The house itself acts strangely, and his uncle seems to be a little odd as he creeps about the house in the middle of the night with stethoscopes and axes.
“The House With A Clock In Its Walls” is a fun family movie that premiered in theatres September 21st (Photo Source IMDB).
Lewis soon learns that his uncle is a warlock, or in his words: a boy witch. The house he has been living in is magic itself complete with magic armchairs, mystical animal foliage and changing stained glass pictures based on the house’s emotions.
He and his uncle, along with Jonathan’s next-door neighbor Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) learn that they have to defeat the house’s old owners, the long-dead warlock Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), and his wife Selena (Renee Elise Goldsberry). Both husband and wife Izard want nothing more than to bring about the apocalypse where they want to turn back time until human existence is no longer an issue.
Tarby (Sunny Suljic), a popular boy from school, convinces Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) to use a dark necromancy book to prove that magic is real (Photo Source IMDB).
All the while, Lewis must overcome the non-magic hurdles of school. Being the new kid is hard on Lewis, so he tries to make friends with the school’s more popular student Tarby (Sunny Suljic), and successfully succeeds in making friends with insect enthusiast Rose Rita Pottinger (Vanessa Anne Williams).
“The House with a Clock in Its Walls” is based off a book by John Bellairs. It is a part of the Lewis Barvavelt series that follows Lewis and his friend Rose Rita as they adventure into the world of magic. For the most part, the movie is pretty close to the book, at least, for the first half of the movie. Much of the exposition and characters are the same as they were described in the book. Where it divulges is when the main evil enters into the stories. Isaac Izard is a main character of “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” as a film but is only mentioned in conversation in the book. Movie-goers get to see more of Isaac Izard in the movie than readers saw in the book, which made the film a little more interesting.
Jack Black portrays Jonathan Barnavelt, an eccentric warlock desperate to determine where the clock that ticks in the walls of his house is hiding (Photo Source IMDB).
“The House with a Clock in Its Walls” itself was a pretty good family film. It is not one of those movies that take major concentration to understand what has happened, but that didn’t make it any less fun to watch. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett had a lovely platonic (in Lewis’s own words) relationship. Their two characters added a humorous element to the film in the form of friendly bickering and jokes.
It was also fascinating seeing Renee Elise Goldsberry portray the villain. Goldsberry previously has done characters such as Angelica in the hit Broadway show “Hamilton,” Henrietta in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and Quell in Netflix’s “Altered Carbon.” It was cool to see that glint of evil in her eyes as her character and her character’s husband fought for the end of the world.
Rose Rita Pottinger (Vanessa Anne Williams) shows Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) her book of insects, and a kindness that no other child has shown him since he moved to Michigan after his parent’s deaths (Photo Source IMDB).
Where “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” lacked was in the pacing. The first half of the movie had weird moments where scenes would just cut around and switch fast. Once the exposition was finished, the second half had excellent pacing and was a lot of fun as the characters fought to save everybody.
This PG movie is a fun, family film and fits very well with the Fall and Halloween season.
3.5 out of 5 paws.
