Mick LaSalle is quickly becoming a household name; in the past week, his awful MONSTER HOUSE has been picked up all over the blogosphere including Boing Boing, Cinematical and SFist. Toronto-based writer Jason Anderson, apparently jealous of LaSalle's infamy, decided to write his own article showing a profound lack of understanding about the animation art. Yesterday, he had an article published on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) website that explains to the world how MONSTER HOUSE and ANT BULLY are revolutionizing animated filmmaking. His classic line is that MONSTER HOUSE offers audiences a "taste of the future technologies that will someday make Pixar’s classics seem as quaint as Dumbo."
Here are some of the choice cuts from Anderson's piece:
"While Pixar set the standard, recent films like Warner Brothers’ The Ant Bully and Sony Pictures’ Monster House are pushing big-league Hollywood animation into promising new territory.""Though Cars has been a box-office leader this summer — second only to Disney’s live-action phenomenon Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest — Over the Hedge, The Ant Bully and Monster House strike a far better balance between form and content, tweaking the Pixar formula and moving beyond its limitations."
"[MONSTER HOUSE] does, however, have the best-rendered cast of CGI Homo sapiens to date..."
"At the screening I attended, the children in my row frequently seemed to be on the edge of tears. Sure, they might require psychotherapy in later life, but they’re getting a taste of the future technologies that will someday make Pixar’s classics seem as quaint as Dumbo."
(Thanks, Peter Fries)