MouseHunt (film)

MouseHunt is a 1997 American dark comedy slapstick film directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Adam Rifkin and starring Nathan Lane and Lee Evans, and featured William Hickey, who died shortly after the film was shot. It was the first family film to be released by DreamWorks Pictures.

In the story, two Laurel and Hardy-like brothers struggle against one small house mouse for possession of a house that was willed to them by their father. The intelligent and crafty mouse outwits them completely. The film is set in a humorously indeterminate 20th-century time period, with styles ranging from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Plot
When once-wealthy string magnate Rudolf Smuntz (William Hickey) dies, he leaves his outdated string factory and a run-down mansion to his two sons, Lars (Lee Evans) and Ernie (Nathan Lane). When Lars refuses a proposal by representatives from the large Zeppco conglomerate to purchase their string factory due to a promise he made to his father, his self-centered, money-hungry wife April (Vicki Lewis) throws him out. Meanwhile, Ernie serves Mayor McKrinkle (Cliff Emmich) at his restaurant in anticipation of becoming a famous chef for serving such a high-profile guest. However, the mayor is poisoned by a cockroach (which came from Rudolf's old box of Cuban cigars that Ernie took for himself) and suffers two heart attacks, with the latter fatal. As a result, Ernie's restaurant is closed down by the Board of Health. The despondent brothers encounter each other and find solace in their father's mansion.

Finding the mansion's blueprints, Ernie and Lars discover that it is a lost masterpiece designed by famous architect Charles Lyle LaRue, and could sell for a colossal fortune if properly restored. Multi-millionaire LaRue collector Alexander Falko (Maury Chaykin) makes a proposal, but Ernie refuses under the belief he and Lars can make a larger profit via auction. However, the brothers have already realized that the house has one stubborn occupant: a tiny and treacherous mouse. Lars is initially dismissive of the mouse but Ernie, fearing a repeat of the cockroach incident, is determined to rid the house of any vermin that could potentially ruin their plan.

When a single mousetrap proves to be useless against the mouse; Ernie and Lars try all sorts of tactics to kill the rodent, each of which fail spectacularly and damage the house even more. To make matters worse; the brothers are served with a repossession notice by the bank, which warns them that the house will face foreclosure unless they make an overdue mortgage payment of $1,200 within two days, which Ernie had borrowed against to purchase a jacuzzi tub, initially in the hope of raising the property value. They initially attempt to raise the money by withholding the pay of the workers at the factory, but this suggestion triggers an angry response from the workers who then go on strike. In desperation, Lars tries to run the factory on his own but ends up losing his clothes after accidentally feeding loose threads from each article of clothing into the machinery while damaging the machine's fuse box. He is then unexpectedly reunited with April, who has learned of the auction and the brothers' plans to get rich.

The brothers purchase a monstrous cat named "Catzilla" to deal with the mouse. Catzilla chases the mouse throughout the house while destroying everything, but gets tricked onto the house's dumbwaiter as the mouse sends him down to his demise. They then hire an eccentric exterminator, Caesar (Christopher Walken), to handle the mouse; though he is severely injured after the mouse attaches him to the winch of his own truck which then violently drags him out of the house and destroys the floorboards and plumbing. Meanwhile, Ernie goes behind Lars' back and tries to revive the deal to sell the factory to Zeppco, but his meeting with them is thwarted when he is hit by a bus while trying to impress two attractive Belgian hair models, named Ingrid and Hilde. As Ernie is taken into hospital, Lars arrives and informs him that April has given them the $1,200 to pay off the mortgage.

After getting back to the house and witnessing the damage caused by Catzilla and Caesar, the brothers resume their task to get rid of the mouse. Ernie chases the mouse up a chimney and gets stuck; and Lars attempts to light a match while the mouse starts a gas leak, creating a violent explosion that blasts Ernie out of the chimney, while Lars is blasted into a china cabinet. Driven to the brink of insanity; Ernie takes a shotgun to shoot the mouse, only to accidentally shoot a compressed can of pesticide that Caesar dropped, igniting it and blowing a huge hole in the floor. The brothers then get into an argument after an answerphone message from Zeppco reveals Lars turning down their offer without telling Ernie, and Ernie attempting to sell the factory in secret, which results in Zeppco's proposal being withdrawn; which culminates with Lars throwing an orange at Ernie which accidentally knocks the mouse unconscious. Unable to finish him off, they instead seal the mouse in a box and mail him to Fidel Castro in Cuba. The brothers quickly reconcile and finish renovating the house.

When the night of the auction arrives, Falko tries to get Ernie to call off the auction with a $10 million offer, but Ernie again refuses, and the auction soon begins. Meanwhile, Lars discovers the mouse's box in the snow returned due to insufficient postage (as he and Ernie forgot to weigh the package) and with a big hole gnawed through it. Lars and Ernie panic upon seeing the mouse return, but attempt to maintain their composure as the auction continues. The mouse also devours Rudolf's "lucky string," which he gave to the brothers before his death, making their vendetta even more personal. The brothers desperately attempt to flush out the mouse by feeding a garden hose into the wall. As the auction reaches a record $25 million bid, the house rapidly floods through the walls and the floors, causing everyone present to be washed out of the house as it collapses. The bidders leave, and April leaves Lars for good for a particularly rich bidder. The brothers' only consolation is the fact that the mouse must finally be dead as their father's "lucky string" is found in the wreckage, only to be quickly disappointed as they accidentally pull it in half.

With nowhere else to go, the brothers return to the factory and fall asleep, with only a single chunk of cheese for food. Having survived his apparent death and followed them on the underside of the car, the mouse restarts and feeds the cheese into the machinery inventing the world's first string cheese, which inspires Ernie and Lars. Ernie and Lars end their war with the mouse and have successfully rebuilt the factory as a novelty string cheese company. Lars has begun a relationship with one of the Belgian hair models, Hilde, and Ernie puts his culinary skill to work in developing new cheese flavors with the mouse as his personal taste tester.

The film ends with the "lucky string" being shown placed in a wall next to Rudolf's portrait with a inscription of his motto: "A world without string is chaos."

Cast

 * Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz
 * Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz
 * Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz
 * Maury Chaykin as Alexander Falko
 * Eric Christmas as Ernie and Lars' lawyer
 * Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe
 * Debra Christofferson as Ingrid
 * Camilla Søeberg as Hilde
 * Ian Abercrombie as auctioneer
 * Annabelle Gurwitch as Roxanne Atkins
 * Eric Poppick as Theodore Plumb, the banker
 * Ernie Sabella as Maury, the cat pound owner
 * William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz (this was Hickey's last film before his death)
 * Christopher Walken as Caesar the Exterminator
 * Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKrinkle
 * Thom Barry as Doctor (uncredited, deleted scenes)
 * Frank Welker as Mouse, Catzilla (voice)

Reception
MouseHunt received mixed reviews from film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 42% of 31 critics had given the film a positive review. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, calling it "not very funny, and maybe couldn't have been very funny no matter what, because the pieces for comedy are not in place... A comedy that hasn't assigned sympathy to some characters and made others hateful cannot expect to get many laughs, because the audience doesn't know who to laugh at, or with."

Regarding the digital special effects, Ebert deemed the film "an excellent example of the way modern advances in special effects can sabotage a picture (Titanic is an example of effects being used wisely). Because it is possible to make a movie in which the mouse can do all sorts of clever things, the filmmakers have assumed incorrectly that it would be funny to see the mouse doing them."

Nonetheless, the film was a financial success. It was released on December 19, 1997, and opened up in North America at #4 and grossed $6,062,922 in its opening weekend, averaging about $2,817 from 2,152 theaters. In its second weekend, it stayed at #4 and increased by 60 percent, making $9,702,770, averaging about $4,428 from 2,191 theaters, and bringing its ten day gross to $21,505,569. It closed on July 1, 1998, with a final gross of $61,917,389 in the North American market and $60,500,000 in other territories for a worldwide total of $122,417,389. Its budget was $38 million. The film was released in the United Kingdom on April 3, 1998, and opened on #2, behind Titanic.