Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Sat 28 Jun (run ended)
Ben Stassen, Jérémie Degruson / Belgium / 2013 / 85 mins
As animation and storytelling, The House of Magic isn’t going to give Pixar any sleepless nights. Nevertheless it’s a fun and occasionally exciting family film that should appeal to younger kids, whilst not totally boring Mum and Dad.
Abandoned kitty Thunder (Murray Blue) seeks shelter in what initially appears to be a creepy old mansion, where inside he finds an old conjurer living with his animals and enchanted clockwork toys. Mistrusted at first, particularly by the magician’s tetchy rabbit, Jack (George Babbit), he finds favour when he becomes vital to foiling the magician’s slimy nephew’s plan to sell the house.
Ben Stassen and Jérémie Degruson’s film starts slow, probably too slow to hold the attention of an inattentive child, but when the action kicks in it’s non-stop with plenty of thrills and peril for our feline hero that will get little hearts beating faster.
As CGI animation, inevitably, it’s 3D and, just as inevitably, it adds little. In fact it’s used here much as the original 3D was in the fifties, with objects flying out of the screen at the audience.
Ultimately this is a fun, but forgettable film. It achieves enough thrills and magic to entertain its intended audience, but doesn’t quite pull off that trick of appealing to the whole family.
Showing as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014