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ENORMOUS ADVANCE ON PINK SHEETS

Fascination juggles perplexity in Monster House. Animation is top-notch, and the advances are plain even to a layman; a character like Chowder is sui generis and far more detailed than necessary, loveable even; the voicings are mostly bull's-eye etc. But the plot is boldly misogynist, and that black sidekick cop if inexplicable. Screenplay credits include two producers of Sarah Silverman's Comedy Central pilot, and they must have barred the doors -- this is material on a platter for her.

The moral of this story would be something like: "If you run off with the circus fat lady and build her a house in the proto-burbs, make sure she's mentally stable before she accidentally dies and terrorizes neighborhood for all eternity." Stranger precepts have been turned into decent flicks, although on the face of it that's pretty lousy all in itself. Am I missing some inside weight joke about Kathleen Turner doing the voice of "CONSTANCE"? At the end, "our hero" merges the terms "house" with "wife" for "housewife" ("CONSTANCE") and then crosses the street to confront his own clueless Mom, who wields a GINORMOUS toothbrush, a monster in the making.