The House of Magic (AKA Thunder and The House of Magic)

Dir: Ben Stassen, Jeremy Degruson

2013

*

I was never going to be in the target demographic for Ben Stassen and Jeremy Degruson's Thunder and The House of Magic but I can't help but think that even if I was a child of ten or under I would still be fairly uninterested. It's unremarkable. The story starts off a little bit 'Disney' where we find a young (and cute) cat abandoned and alone and then it gets a little bit 'Pixar' (Toy Story being the main film of theirs that comes to mind) when said cat meets little inventions (toys basically) in a big house and they all have something of an adventure together that involves going outside etc etc. Thunder, the little cat in question, stops being as cute when he starts speaking. I suppose there is nothing wrong with the plot in the sense that it is made for kids and it is fairly simple for them to follow but the glaringly bad computer-aided animation will still surely give toddlers a glimpse of their very first head-ache? A good 50% of the movie looks like you're watching someone else playing a video game (badly for that matter) but not to the point where you'd want to stop watching and play a video game, but to the point whereby you want to go outside, for a long walk, read a book, do something different entirely. The whole thing is a mish-mash of other films, other people's ideas and other film's characters. There is nothing of originality or interest that makes this film its own. It's a cheap straight-to-DVD film that had no business having a cinematic release. Written in a rush, made on the cheap and above all boring. There is no charm here, the animals/toys aren't even that cute and the voice actors bring nothing to the characters. Not sure how the film did as well as it did, considering the lack of effort in trying to compete with the far better animated films out there.