I THINK I saw this as a kid, but it's been so long that I actually forgot most of the details about it.
As mentioned before, I've been trying to watch more Halloween movies as this month comes to a close, and one of the films I'd been intending to watch was Monster House. I've heard a lot of good things about this film, but I wanted to wait for the Halloween Season to do so. Not only that, but I'd been forgetting to actually watch it on-time for the last few months. This year, I finally had the opportunity to do so; and suffice it to say, I was not disappointed.
The film was very enjoyable. It has a very unique vibe to the thing, being probably the most Halloween-y thing I've seen all month. The characters are all easily recognizable, each one standing out against the crowd for different reasons. The story was shockingly good; even though I had a vague memory of the broad strokes, I was not expecting the specific twists-and-turns of the plot. If you didn't know the major ending twist, I can fully believe that you'd pick up what the film was throwing down. The visuals can be a little jarring (being a Robert Zemeckis/ImageMovers Mocap Film), but I find that it has great potential in a horror film like this; as well it allows for many shockingly hilarious scenes. For real, I busted up laughing at the moments of cartoon violence with realistic movement early in the film. It had a good escalating tension, not letting you know exactly what was going to happen next, nor how things would specifically play out.
I will say that there are two major things against the film. Firstly, the romance subplot. While seeing our leads DJ and Chowder trying to impress Jenny led to at least one really good joke, it was a little annoying to see them falling over themselves to try and impress the designated girl of the group. Secondly, and more broadly, the spoken comedy isn't nearly as funny as the acted comedy. Visual gags like Chowder's ball rebounding into his face and the famous scene of "Skull" eating Chowder's candy right out of his hand before running off hit extremely well; meanwhile the only lines that made me chuckle were the Uvula joke and the line about Chowder's parents. Regardless, they don't weigh TOO heavily on my opinion of the film.
Overall, I think this film is an absolute blast to watch. It's kind of like a time capsule for the Early-2000s. It could very well become a yearly watch for my family and I, so for now I'm giving it a really solid 9/10.