MouseHunt

MouseHunt
Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Produced by	Bart Brown Bruce Cohen Tony Ludwig
Written by	Adam Rifkin
Starring	Nathan Lane Lee Evans Vicki Lewis Maury Chaykin Christopher Walken
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Cinematography	Phedon Papamichael Jr.
Distributed by	DreamWorks
Release date(s)	December 19, 1997
Running time	96 min.
Language	English
Budget	$38 million

MouseHunt (1997) is an American slapstick/black comedy film, directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Adam Rifkin and starring Nathan Lane and Lee Evans.

The story revolves around two brothers who inherit a crumbling old house from their eccentric father, and subsequently find themselves locked in a battle of wits with a hyper-intelligent mouse.

Plot

Lars (Lee Evans) and Ernie (Nathan Lane) Smuntz are two hapless brothers, and sons of wealthy string manufacturer Rudolf Smuntz (William Hickey). Pop, as they called him, dies, leaving them his outdated string factory and a handful of personal items including a box of cigars, which Ernie quickly takes, and the deed to an old mansion with a bank debt. Later that day, a couple of representatives from company called Zeppco International offers to buy the factory from Lars. Lars then remembers he and his brother, after being given a lucky piece of string, had promised their dying father to never sell the factory. He declines the offer (without first telling Ernie) but accepts a business card from the Zeppco representatives. That night, his wife April (Vicki Lewis) discovers this and throws him out in a rage. Meanwhile, Ernie, who never cared for his father's business, serves Mayor McKinkle (Cliff Emmich) at his restaurant Chez Ernie. A cockroach crawls out of the box of cigars into one of the dishes. Mayor McKinkle accidentally eats it and later dies of a heart attack in the hospital. Due to the publicity, Ernie loses his restaurant and home. He meets Lars in a diner, where they reconcile and decide to investigate the old mansion, since both of them have nowhere else to live.

They find the house to be "... just like him: cold and spooky". Their first night in the only bed there is a noise, which they attribute to a mouse that they find in the attic. They also find the mansion's blueprints, which show that it was built in 1876 by a famous architect, Charles Lyle LaRue. The find attracts immediate interest, including a collector of LaRue items, Alexander Falko (Maury Chaykin), who offers to buy the mansion right then for $10 million. However, Ernie greedily convinces Lars that they can make more money if they restore it and then auction it off.

April reconciles with Lars and finances the restoration. The brothers begin renovating, which destroys the mouse's home behind a wall. The mouse subsequently sabotages their efforts, invoking numerous attempts by them to kill it, which injure only themselves and coincidentally destroy prominent portions of the house. They cover the floor with mousetraps, which the mouse triggers with a cherry. They try to trap it up with a vacuum cleaner, but the nozzle gets stuck in a sewage pipe, causing the vacuum cleaner bag to explode. They acquire a deranged cat nicknamed Catzilla from the Cat Care Society Owner named Maurey (Ernie Sabella). The mouse tricks Catzilla into falling down a Dumbwaiter shaft. Finally, they hire an eccentric pest-control expert named Caesar (Christopher Walken).

Meanwhile, Ernie finds the Zeppco business card in the factory and surreptitiously arranges a meeting (without telling Lars), which never occurs because he flirts with two Belgian women and gets hit by a bus. The brothers return to the house as Caesar, injured and insane thanks to a dangerous set of traps, is taken away by paramedics, who found him locked in a trunk in the attic, like the previous owner. After another chase after the mouse, the two brothers result in being burnt/injured with Ernie being blasted out of the chimney and into a frozen lake in a ball of fire. Completely berserk, Ernie grabs a shotgun and fires at the mouse, missing each time and causing the floor to collapse by accidentally shooting a bug bomb dropped by Caesar. In the ensuing calm, the answering machine plays a message from Zeppco, withdrawing their offer to buy the factory. The brothers begin to argue about each betrayal, and Lars, enraged, throws an orange at Ernie, missing and knocking the mouse unconscious. Finding the opportunity, the brothers wanted to finish the mouse off, but their consciences desists them despite all the mayhem the mouse contributed. Instead, the brothers attempt to get rid of the mouse once and for all by posting it to Cuba. They finally finish restoring the mansion and host a lavish auction at the premises. The bidding rises into millions, when Lars discovers the mouse parcel, returned due to insufficient postage, with a hole chewed through. In horror, the brothers immediately attempt to find and kill the mouse. They feed a hose into the walls to try and flush the mouse out. Meanwhile, Alexander Falko bids $25 million, but before the auctioneer's gavel drops, the wall behind him collapses under the water pressure. The water flushes out all the people inside the house before the house finally collapses to the ground. The brothers' only consolation is the apparent certainty that the mouse has finally been killed, and they assumed so when they found their father's lucky piece of string, which the mouse ate earlier.

Ruined again, the brothers spend the night in the string factory, unaware that the mouse has survived and followed them by clinging to the exhaust of their old Volvo. The mouse activates the factory machinery and drops a slab of cheese into the wax receptacle. The noise awakens the brothers, who find a ball of string cheese at the end of the production line. The film switches to Lars giving his new girlfriend a tour of the modernised factory, which now manufactures string cheese very profitably. Ernie is the top chef for new blends, but accepts them only after quality control by the mouse, telling it, "We want you to be our spokesperson. I'm sure people have had a mouse as a spokesperson before and it turned out pretty well."

The film ends with the portrait of Rudolf Smuntz beaming (his expression in the portrait has been changing throughout the entire film), and his lucky piece of string laminated, framed and hung beside the portrait, with his famous quotation written under it, "A world without string is chaos."

Cast

• Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz
• Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz
• Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz
• Maury Chaykin as Alexander Falko
• William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz
• Christopher Walken as Caesar, the Exterminator
• Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe
• Debra Christofferson as Ingrid
• Ian Abercrombie as The Auctioneer
• Eric Christmas as The Smuntz' Lawyer
• Ernie Sabella as Maury, the Pound Caretaker
• Alex Koch as Len, a photographer
• Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKringle
• Melanie MacQueen as Mayor McKringle's Wife

Reception

The film was a financial success. It was released on December 19, 1997 and opened up at #4 and grossed $6,062,922 in the opening weekend. wrapped up its run on July 1, 1998 or 27.9 weeks with $61,917,389 in the domestic market and $60,500,000 in the overseas market for a total of $122,417,389. Its budget was $38 million.^[1]

References to Other Films

• During the auction scene, Ernie greets a man by saying "Hakuna Matata." Nathan Lane, the actor playing Ernie, provided the voice for Timon the meerkat in Disney's The Lion King, in which the phrase "hakuna matata" played an important role in helping the young lion, Simba, grow up. Also, Ernie Sabella (who portrayed Pumbaa in "The Lion King") also acts in this movie.

References

External links

• Mousehunt at the Internet Movie Database
• Mousehunt at Box Office Mojo