The Monster Squad

Directed by Fred Dekker, The Monster Squad follows a group of pre-teens as they’re forced to battle a series of such familiar antagonists as Dracula (Duncan Regehr) and the Wolf Man (Jonathan Gries). It’s a high-concept premise that is, for the most part, employed to persistently underwhelming and uninvolving effect by Dekker, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Shane Black, delivers a briskly-paced yet mostly tedious comedy that contains few, if any, elements designed to initially capture the viewer’s attention and interest – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a general lack of sympathetic, compelling central characters. (The aforementioned pre-teens are all so generic that it becomes impossible to wholeheartedly root for their continuing success.) And although Dekker admittedly does offer up a small handful of engaging sequences, including an admittedly terrific wolfman-transformation interlude in a phone booth, The Monster Squad limps towards an egregiously frenetic climax that ensures it ends on as lackluster a note as one could envision – which does, in the final analysis, cement the picture’s place as a short-yet-not-short enough misfire that holds little appeal for viewers over a certain age.

** out of ****