Mouse Hunt

For the game, see MouseHunt.

Mouse Hunt
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Written by	Adam Rifkin
Produced by	Bruce Cohen Tony Ludwig Alan Riche
Starring	Nathan Lane Lee Evans Maury Chaykin Christopher Walken
Cinematography	Phedon Papamichael
Edited by	Craig Wood
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Distributed by	DreamWorks Pictures
Release date	December 19, 1997 (1997-12-19) (United States)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$38 million
Box office	$125.4 million

Mouse Hunt is a 1997 American slapstick black comedy film written by Adam Rifkin and directed by Gore Verbinski in his feature film directorial debut. It stars Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Maury Chaykin, and Christopher Walken. The film follows two Laurel and Hardy-like brothers in their struggle against one small but crafty house mouse for possession of a mansion which was willed to them by their father. While the film is set in the late 20th century, styles range humorously from the 1940s to the 1990s.

It was the first family film to be released by DreamWorks Pictures, who released it in the United States on December 19, 1997, to mixed reviews, but was a commercial success, earning $125.4 million on the box office against a budget of $38 million.

Mouse Hunt features one of William Hickey's final roles. The film was dedicated to his memory.

Plot

When the once-wealthy string magnate Rudolf Smuntz dies, he leaves his factory and a dilapidated Victorian mansion to his son Lars and his son Ernie, who has ignored the family business to become a chef; he walks out of the reading of the will, taking a box of cigars. At Ernie's restaurant, a cockroach crawls out of the box and into a dish prepared for Mayor McKrinkle, causing him a fatal heart attack. After McKrinkle's death, Ernie's restaurant is shut down and scheduled for demolition. Ernie loses his career and his home. Meanwhile, Zeppco International, a cord company, offers Lars a buyout for the factory, but he remembers his promise to Rudolf never to sell it, and refuses. Furious, Lars's greedy wife, April, kicks him out of the house. Lars and Ernie meet up, and with nowhere else to go, spend the night in the mansion.

The brothers cannot sleep due to noises caused by a very intelligent mouse, and while investigating, discover the blueprints of the property. The blueprints reveal that the mansion is the fabled final design of the famous architect, Charles Lyle LaRue, and would be worth a fortune if restored. The brothers decide to renovate and auction the mansion to recover their lives. They later see the mouse again. Ernie, fearing a repeat of the cockroach incident, convinces Lars that they must also get rid of the mouse. To remove the mouse, the brothers buy a cat named "Catzilla" and hire exterminator Caesar; the mouse drops Catzilla in a dumbwaiter, and traumatizes Caesar by dragging him around the mansion using his truck's winch line.

Ernie had borrowed against the mansion's mortgage to pay for an unnecessary addition as part of the renovations. Now, they will be evicted by the bank in two days unless they pay. However, with their limited funds, the brothers cannot pay their workers, prompting them to quit. Ernie finds Zeppco's business card and arranges a meeting to secretly accept their buyout offer. After Lars accidentally loses his clothes to machines while trying to run the factory alone, he is met by April, who has learned of the mansion's value and takes Lars back, giving him the funds that they need. While attempting to impress women, Ernie is hit by a bus and misses his meeting with Zeppco's representatives.

Enraged, Ernie later chases the mouse with a shotgun and accidentally shoots a bug bomb Caesar had dropped, blowing a hole in the floor. Lars later overhears Zeppco call and leave a voicemail, saying that they have taken back their proposal since Lars declined their offer and Ernie never showed up for the meeting. Angry at each other for their actions, the brothers get into an argument. Lars throws an orange at Ernie, which misses him but hits the mouse, who is stunned but still alive. The brothers cannot bring themselves to finish him off, and instead mail him in a box addressed to Fidel Castro. The brothers reconcile and finish their renovations. The postal box, however, is eventually returned due to insufficient postage. On the night of the auction, while giving a speech, Ernie sees the mouse on his podium. As the auction begins, the brothers attempt to flush the mouse out with a garden hose, filling an inner wall of the mansion with water until it bursts, washing the bidders out and causing the estate to collapse. When April leaves with a wealthy bidder, the brothers are left with nothing, but take solace in that the collapse must have killed the mouse.

The brothers spend the night in the factory, unaware that the mouse has actually survived, and followed them. Seeing their sorry state, the mouse takes pity on them and activates the factory's machinery, dropping a block of cheese into the wax boiler to produce a ball of string cheese. Inspired, the brothers end their battle with the mouse and renovate the factory to produce string cheese and other cheese-based products. Lars (now having formed a relationship with a Belgian model named Hilde) runs the factory with Ernie as the head chef and the mouse as their taste-tester for new cheese combinations.

Cast

• Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz, a man who refused heirdom to his father's string factory to become a chef.
• Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz, Ernie's brother and the heir to their father's string factory.
• Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz, Lars' gold-digging former wife.
• Maury Chaykin as Alexander Falko, a wealthy LaRue collector.
• William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz, a string magnate and the late father of Ernie and Lars.
• Christopher Walken as Caesar, an odd and eccentric exterminator hired by the Smuntz brothers to rid them of the mouse.
• Eric Christmas as Ernie and Lars' lawyer.
  • This was Christmas' final acting performance before he died in July 22, 2000.
• Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe, a LaRue historian.
• Camilla Soeberg as Hilde, a Belgian model.
• Debra Christofferson as Ingrid, a Belgian model.
• Ian Abercrombie as the auctioneer.
• Annabelle Gurwitch as Roxanne Atkins, a photographer.
• Eric Poppick as Theodore Plumb, the banker.
• Ernie Sabella as Maury, a worker at the cat shelter.
• Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKrinkle.
• Susan Blommaert as Ms. Park Avenue
• Carmen Filpi as Pallbearer #4
• Jack Angeles as Kennel Employee
• Thom Barry as a doctor (scenes deleted)
• Sarah Dampf as a crying girl

Release

Mouse Hunt was released in North America on December 19, 1997 and opened in the #4 spot. The film was released in the United Kingdom on April 3, 1998, and opened at #2, behind Titanic.

Home media

Mouse Hunt was released on VHS on May 5, 1998, and DVD on December 8, 1998, by DreamWorks Home Entertainment. It was released on Blu-ray on February 2, 2021, by Paramount Home Entertainment. A 4K Ultra HD release of the film will be released by Kino Lorber under license from Paramount in 2025.

Reception

Box office

The film was a box-office success, partially due to its release during the Christmas and New Year's holiday period. It grossed $6,062,922 in its opening weekend, averaging $2,817 from 2,152 theaters. In its second weekend, it stayed at #4 and increased by 60 percent, making $9,702,770, averaging $4,428 from 2,191 theaters, and bringing its 10-day gross to $21,505,569. In its third weekend, it once again stayed at #4 and dropped by only 13 percent, making $8,418,001, averaging $3,804 from 2,213 theaters, and bringing its 17-day gross to $40,021,527. 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.

Critical response

Mouse Hunt received mixed reviews from film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 44% of 33 critics had given the film a positive review. The critics consensus reads: "Mouse Hunt gets trapped under the weight of its excessive slapstick antics." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 54 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". 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." His colleague Gene Siskel disagreed and liked the film.

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."

See also

• List of American films of 1997

External links

• official website at the Wayback Machine (archived December 2, 1998)
• Mouse Hunt at IMDb
• Mouse Hunt at the TCM Movie Database
• Mouse Hunt at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Mouse Hunt at Box Office Mojo
• Mouse Hunt at Rotten Tomatoes