Day 51 -- Little Monsters

Released: August 25th, 1989

Starring: Fred Savage, Howie Mandel, Ben Savage, Daniel Stern, Amber Barretto

Writer/Director: Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot

Description: A boy discovers an incredible and gruesome world of monsters under his bed.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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Some genres I believe are extinct. One of those is the pre-teen adventure comedy. Its heyday was the 80s to the mid-90s, with "The Goonies", "Big" and "Home Alone" representing the most well known. They weren't just for kids like today's attempts, such as "Spy Kids". Parents were able to enjoy the film rather than have it not feel like two hours of torture. Nothing currently being made has the staying power and pass down qualities that these films did.

"Little Monsters" is one of the more forgotten kids movies of the time. It was Fred Savage's first movie after "Wonder Years" began airing. It was oddly meta because Savage's father in the film was the voice of grown up Kevin Arnold, Daniel Stern. I would be speaking out of turn if I said that this was the beginning of Stern's kid film fame, ending with "Rookie of the Year" in 1993 because I was not aware enough back then to know if people even remembered he was in this film.

The story was  interesting, as it took an idea that kids have had for an eternity, and turned it into a compelling plot. Kids have always been afraid of "monsters" in the closet or under the bed; imaginations at that point of life are amazing. But what writers, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot, did was create an entire world full of everything adolescents would dream of at night: Pranks, video games, candy, and no parents, you know everything a developing mind thinks is important.

The contrast between the "monster" world and the real world was well designed, and showed how quickly the fun and excitement of the underworld could become a nightmare quick. It was a staple of the genre that everything would be good and then would become nothing like the kid expected. In many ways, it stuck to your three-act structure religiously, but was still compelling enough that you didn't know the outcome. During the heyday, these films were a lot darker than they are today.

Savage, as Brian, fell into the trap most young actors do, he played the same character in everything he was in, which means you can't differentiate between Brian and Kevin. It is no fault of his own, but it becomes distracting after a while. Howie Mandel was the perfect choice at the time for Maurice because his stand up was still funny and he could embody the role of an overgrown child. Whether or not they were good individually, the most important thing was chemistry, and they had it in bucket loads.

The same couldn't be said for most of the supporting actors, except for Ben Savage, the future "teen icon" Corey Matthews held his own as little brother Eric. Usually this is okay for movies involving pre-teens, but for this genre, they needed to be better. I put this fully on the casting for not finding actors that worked well together. They can't all hit the jackpot like in "Goonies" where most of the actors were future regulars in Hollywood, and blended well together. For the movie to last decades, the supporting cast needs to be as good, and "Little Monster's" were sub-par.

"Little Monsters" never becomes too bogged down in its kids movie label, and the final action scenes are actually well staged. The writing is definitely good enough to keep parents and kids interested the whole time, but still falls short of some of the upper echelon movies of the genre.,

Rating: 5.5/10 -- Great family night movie, I'd highly recommend it over anything that released today even though it's on the second tier of kid adventure movies.