Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Mousehunt Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 25, 2021

Director Gore Verbinski's (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) Mouse Hunt is a "sophisticated" Comedy of errors, full of goofy slapstick and (hit or miss, mostly hit) wit. Verbinski tries to elevate the material while still in many ways turning its attention to the lowest common denominator. This was Verbinski's debut film and it's easy to see the promise in it. The story is simple but there's an air of elegance to it. He crafts it lovingly and with keen attention to narrative and photographic detail even if the material is more cartoonish than serious, when phoning it in would have still earned the studio a pretty penny. But Verbinski brings out the best in what could have been a bottom feeding film, bringing an aesthetically agreeable and comically on-point misadventure to the screen with humor, enthusiasm, and charm to spare.

Brothers Lars (Lee Evans) and Ernie (Nathan Lane) Smuntz have just watched their frail, elderly father (William Hickey) pass away, leaving behind a seemingly worthless house and a once prestigious string factory that made the family a fortune. Ernie is a quasi-celebrity chef who has made it big on his own. He’s the material brother while Lars is the more levelheaded and sentimental. Lars refuses to sell the factory for a major payday, even if he needs the money to please his high maintenance wife April (Vicki Lewis). Lars needs it now, too, when his star dwindles and his business shutters following a high profile death in his restaurant. When the brothers, both down on their luck and with nowhere to go, turn to the rickety old house for shelter, they quickly discover it was built by a famous architect and that it is potentially worth millions. As they work to restore it, their efforts are put on hold – and perhaps made for naught – when they turn their attention to killing a fury intruder who is making their lives miserable.

Mouse Hunt offers light and simple entertainment with a feeling of something more right below the surface. The movie is charming if it's anything, a fine example of essentially crude slapstick given an air of class. The film doesn't aspire to much more than crude beats but Verbinski infuses it with a sort of quasi-artistry that really plays well against the movie's basic flow, which follows two determined but mostly hapless men trying to outwit a simple mouse that somehow knows how to avoid the perils and pitfalls placed in its path. It's sort of like a weird reversal of Home Alone in some ways, where the house is a mess rather than a mansion, where the mouse is Kevin, and where the two bumbling homesteaders play the part of the crooks, except here it is they placing the traps. It's pretty fun even if it might not look it on the surface, thanks certainly to Verbinski's work but also its lead performers and production design.

Beyond any way Verbinski makes the movie stand apart on his end, it's Lee Evans and Nathan Lane that make the movie sing. There's rock-solid chemistry here, even as the characters demonstrate disparate personalities through the first act. They're brothers, at odds in many ways, but even if they approach life from different perspectives that lifelong bond of blood and brotherhood is evident, both as they are more separated and also through the film's second and third acts as new shared time together renews their bonded spirits. Production design is first-rate, too. The house looks resplendent even in a dilapidated form; the audience can see the potential in it and the massive amount of restoration work necessary to bring it to the market, and it also serves as a fun, slightly creepy and perilous, setting for the title action as the brothers attempt to rid the home of its unwanted rodent resident.

Mousehunt Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

It's Mouse Hunt, not exactly the world's foremost motion picture, so expectations for a good picture quality might not be super high (and it's approaching 25 years old at that). But this looks terrific. Paramount is really bringing its A-game right now and Mouse Hunt couldn't look more filmic, sharp, and practically perfect on Blu-ray. The movie is a textural powerhouse. Not only is it finely grainy, preserving its natural film quality state, it's also replete with exceptionally well defined details throughout, and particularly in the old house the brothers inherit. All of the dust and wear around the house – worn woods, warped wallpaper, cobwebs hanging about, scuffs on the hardwood floors – look marvelous. It's a target-rich environment, so to speak, for rugged and ragged and high yield textural delights. Of course faces and clothes look great, too, for sharp intimacy and picture-perfect detail, but it's the house that really looks striking. The color palette is a bit depressed by design. The movie's colors are depleted to give it a weathered appearance right from the bleak, rainy, blue and black dominant funeral scene forward. Lighting is generally low and there's a slightly warm cast to the picture inside the old house where shades of brown, primarily, but also some blacks and grays and maybe very dark reds, live and thrive. It's not vibrant by any means, but it is extremely faithful to the intended aesthetics. Add perfectly complimentary flesh tones, expert black levels, and no evidence of either print wear or encode problems and there's absolutely nothing to keep this transfer from five-star perfection.

Mousehunt Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mouse Hunt scampers onto Blu-ray with a very well rounded DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The film opens with organ music and saturating rainfall, the former nicely spaced and airy in detail, the latter with fine immersive saturation all around the listener, soaking the scene (and the home listening area, practically) with good pelting presence (a few sewer drips to follow offer some discrete fun, too). It's a positive pace setter for the audio delights to come. The various action scenes featuring the brothers (comically) attempting to capture the mouse are a delight, whether a series of traps cracking shut all over the stage or just simple things like swats with makeshift weapons. A nail gun fires its deadly daggers with depth in one mid film scene as the mouse scampers away from the darting projectiles which move and swoosh with great, thunderous depth from its perspective. Music is impressively large and healthy with fine fidelity through the range and both positive subwoofer and surround usage. Light atmospherics, perfectly positioned and at just the right volume, allow the audience to feel all the more immersed into the house. Finally, lifelike, center positioned, and organically prioritized dialogue round this excellent track into fine and finished form.

Mousehunt Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Mouse Hunt contains deleted scenes and a pair of trailers. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• From the Cutting Room Floor (Deleted Scenes) (480i, window box, 14:29 total runtime): Included are Lee Evans: A Day at the Office..., Christopher Walken: Tools of the Trade..., Christopher Walken: Mouse Hunt..., Christopher Walken: Quality Control..., Ensemble: Hospital Scene..., Ensemble: Doings at the Auction..., and Ensemble: Say Cheese...
• Teaser Trailer (480i, window box, 1:26)
• Theatrical Trailer (480i, window box, 2:04)

Mousehunt Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mouse Hunt could have been a throwaway movie, and maybe at its core it is a fairly forgettable picture built on a premise fit for disposable entertainment, but it has several positives working to its benefit, namely Verbinski's rookie, but well capable, craftsmanship; Evans' and Lane's enthusiastic performances; and the picture's excellent production design and capable (particularly for its age) special effects. It's a pleasant surprise, certainly not a classic but a very agreeable little time killer that is far better than it has any business to be. Paramount's Blu-ray includes some deleted scenes and trailers and a terrific lossless soundtrack, but the highlight here is absolutely the five-star video transfer. Recommended!