Here’s the premise: Upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach’s comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange… he is a prisoner of his own imagination – the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it’s suddenly up to Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Zach’s friend Champ (Ryan Lee) to get all of them back in the books where they belong.
Jack Black does a great job as RL Stine, and he surrounded by a cast that is great at bringing the spooky stories of Stine to life. Director Rob Letterman does a great job keeping the feel of the world of Stine that we all fell in love with as kids and young adults. It was great to see all the creatures I read about when I was younger and that my kids loved as they grew up. The story itself is solid and leaves you satisfied from beginning to end and there are enough laughs to keep you entertained outside of the spookiness. It has a PG rating, so it is a good movie for kids; but it may be too scary for younger viewers so just be wary of the wee ones.
