House Party

In some ways, The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) made a good followup to Mortal Engines. They are both visually inventive movies with a touch of steampunk, written for a younger crowd.

It’s set in the 1950s, New Zebedee, MO. Our hero is 10-year old Owen Vaccaro, a quiet, studious kid who habitually wears Capt. Midnight goggles. He is arriving by bus to live with his uncle since his parents were killed in a car crash. His uncle is Jack Black, a wierdo who wears a kimono and sometimes a fez. He lives in a spooky house filled with clocks and surrounded by jack o’ lanterns (even though it is not Halloween). His neighbor and close frenemy is Cate Blanchett. They insult each other, eat chocolate chip cookies for dinner and play poker with Vaccaro. It seems like a fun place. But in bed he hears a strange ticking sound...

In his new school, he’s kind of out of place. The kids whisper behind his back (probably about the goggles). But one kid, who is running for class president, befriends him - and tells him confidentially to lose the goggles.

To cut to the chase, it turns out that Black and Blanchett are warlock and witch, and the house was owned by an evil wizard and his consort. He killed himself in a bad experiment, but left a curse on the house - the clock in the walls. I’m not too clear on the details, but when the clock runs down, or goes off, or something, well, that’s it for the whole world.

So we have a little orphan, missing his mother, leaving in a crazy house with a weird uncle and strange neighbor, and he just wants to fit in. He also wants to learn magic, of course. It’s not a new story, but it’s a good one.

The best part, fittingly, is the house. It has an animated armchair, a topiary gryphon that poops piles of leaves, and a stained glass window that goes from sailing ship to Canadian Mountie when you aren’t looking.Black’s retro hipster wizard is a lot of fun too. He conjures a star show in the backyard with a free jazz sax solo, for example. Cate Blanchett is beautiful and unsurprisingly soulful as the witch next door, but it’s kind of a difficult part. The script doesn’t want her to be a romantic interest for Black or a mother substitute for Vaccaro. But she’s so warm and lovable, it feels sort of inevitable.

I enjoyed this a lot. Ms. Spenser was a little less enthusiastic - maybe it was a little too rote for her, or maybe she was just a little out of sorts. What did you think?