Honestly, long before I watched this movie I wanted to use it to talk about casting choices. I thought there’d be more but it was a mediocre movie… nothing much to say other than I expected more.
Okay, so casting choices. When I picked up the trailer for this I was honestly really excited! Jack Black and Cate Blanchett in the same movie? As friends that engage in savage but joking name-calling? I was totally in. I know Jack Black from comedies like Kung Fu Panda, the recent Jumanji remake, etc, and Cate Blanchett from more serious roles like Ocean’s 8 and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. When I see Jack Black I think of Poh, and when I see Cate Blanchett I think of that one scene in Thor: Ragnarok when she invades Asgard looking indescribably badass. Bringing 2 actors like these, with such extensive careers that the audience definitely has some prior association with them, into a movie like this was definitely a risk. Thankfully it was actually pulled off - the banter between the 2 characters was engaging and great fun to watch, exploiting the dichotomy between the actors’ reputations to form the dichotomy between the 2 characters. However, the more emotional scenes somehow lose this awareness of who theses actors are, and treats them as if they aren’t bringing in certain expectations from the audience simply by being who they are. Of course, this is unavoidable because this emotional conflict was needed to raise the stakes. For me at least, the reputations of the actors overtook their characters and, while it increased my enjoyment of the light-hearted scenes, it lessened any emotional investment I’d have later in the movie.
One movie that actually exploits actors’ pre-existing reputations really well is Ocean’s 8. It has an ensemble of many characters, and not all of them are important, and so effective casting choices are used to flesh out character using the actor’s own reputation. For example, Rihanna’s reputation for insolent, sultry confidence gets transferred over to Eight Ball, and results in a character that’s easy for the audience to conceive based on what we know of her. Cate Blanchett, at least in my mind, is strong, cool-headed and has a smile like a knife, which her character in Ocean’s Eight matched entirely. I guess the lesson here is to be careful of which big name actors are used, and how these casting choices affect our understanding of the character. As audience members, we should look at the interaction of the casted actors’ reputation with the written character, and try to see if what we get is intentional or not on the part of the filmmaking team.
Apart from casting choices, honestly The House with a Clock in its Walls is …. mediocre at best. It had good banter, pretty good character interactions in the beginning, but towards the third act it was honestly really predictable. When Uncle Jonathan says not to open that cabinet, my first thought is that it’s gonna be one of those movies where Lewis is stupid enough to open it while trying to mistakenly prove something. Then the school scenes come in and I was like… yeah it’s gonna be for friendship and fitting in. They always say that to tell a good story, the problem should be created by the main character themselves… but I honestly don’t think it should be because of a reason like ignorance or impulsiveness? The best problems are created with intention on the part of the characters, when they made the decision themselves, perhaps not understanding the full stakes, but with the determination to continue regardless (I’m talking full metal alchemist when the Elric brothers try to revive their mom).
This movie did try to hav some kind of moral about being confident in your weirdness and the creation of a family… and I acknowledge it as a legitimate moral but it could’ve honestly been done better.