Goosebumps

This review may contain spoilers!

This is a really enjoyable family film, though if you're an actual Goosebumps fan it may not be your thing. I would give Goosebumps a 6.5/10.

This movie had a plot that was fairly solid, I enjoyed the quest to recapture all of the monsters and I even enjoyed the romance storyline between Zach and Hannah. What really drives the plot is the human element of Zach who is coping with the loss of his father while adjusting to a new town, this aspect of character exploration made Goosebumps more than just a simple film. I think the film was more comedy than horror because honestly this was hilairious, I was laughing through a lot of scenes. The pacing for this film was well done, everything unfolded at a well calculated rate. The score for this film was perfect, it really played up the horror vibe well. I also liked the special effects even if some of the animation models could've had a little more work done, there were a lot of monsters in this film and I thought the way they were done was quite good.

Dylan Minnette, who played Zach, is a fantastic lead in this film; I thought he was quite charismatic and excelled at delivering some good sarcastic comedy. Odeya Rush, who played Hannah, matches Minnette perfectly in a leading role; she's a very likeable character and I enjoyed the twist around her character. Amy Ryan, who played Gale, is quite a fun character with some very realistic dialogue delivery; I enjoyed scenes between her and Minnette as they were some of the most genuine of the film. Amanda Lund and Timothy Simons, who played Officer Brooks and Officer Stevens respectively, gave two of the best scenes of the film; I loved these as a comedic duet and their running gag about a police officer in training.

However the best performance came from Jillian Bell, who played Lorraine. Bell has the strongest comedic presence out of anyone in this film, often delivering one liners that are absolute gold. She really brought a lot of her presence to any scene that she appears in, ultimately she is a scene stealer. Even when bogged down with a romance subplot between herself and Black she rises above and makes the best out of it. A really entertaining performance.

I wasn't a fan that they tried to force a romance between Black and Bell's characters as well as Ryan and Marino's, the only effect this had was the usual tired feeling of a forced attempt to romantically link all the single characters with partners. The tone of this film wasn't very scary or tense was another problem, you never really believed that any of the characters was in any real danger. The cinematography was quite simple and certainly didn't match up to the entertaining effects.

Jack Black, who played R. L. Stine, felt like he was forcing it this entire film; he gave a very artificial performance as Stine and you didn't really care much about this role. Black also voiced the film's main antagonist, Slappy, who started out as quite sinister and much more interesting than Stine but was ultimately very stereotypical and plagued by awful dialogue. Ryan Lee, who played Champ, was more annoying sidekick than comedic sidekick; he's irritating to watch in this film and just doesn't stack up to the rest of the cast. Ken Marino, who played Coach Carr, spearheaded this awkward attempt to create a romance between him and Ryan; thank God Marino has the screen presence of a cricket. Keith Arthur Bolden, who played Principal Garrison, had a role that could've been quite interesting in this film; he almost strongly lead the school against the monsters but was sadly underused.