I remember seeing this when I was about 9 or 10 on HBO really enjoying it but recently revisted it on vhs and man was this a creepy and repellent little film. The whole underworld is dark and gross, the monsters all seem to be disfigured, one had brain matter sticking out the back of his head, Howie Mandell urinates into an apple juice bottle while the kid drinks it at school, it's a really creepy distasteful little film.
shareI agree. We saw it for the first time, and I basically wrote it off as one of his 'stupider stupid movies'. Neither my 18 year old son, nor I thought it appropriate for children, while my 14 year old daughter, who perpetually (apparently) has the sense of humour of a ten year old boy thought it was great.
It was gross, it was mean-spirited, it was profane (both children questioned the amount of cursing in the movie) and to me it just screamed 'money grab' by Fred and Ben's parents.
The whole underworld is dark and gross
the monsters all seem to be disfigured
Howie Mandell urinates into an apple juice bottle while the kid drinks it at school
I think we, as adults, have an instinct to be protective of children. Based on that, I can totally see where you're coming from. However, I watched this movie as a kid (9 or 10 probably) and I thought it was great!
I think sometimes it's difficult to tell what kinds of content will bother a child. 'Earnest Scared Stupid' really bothered me as a kid and there's probably way less 'inappropriate' content in that movie.
I think the most troublesome aspects of 'Little Monsters' is in the form of subtext and jokes which make it seem very 'adult' to adults, but which will go over the heads of children.
So easy to tell who the PC Libtards are here. If anything is "gross and repellent" it's you cretins.
Nobody thinks it's weird this guy made this post 10 years ago and never responded to any other comments? Seems to me that (s)he came in just to get a conversation going and put posts on a message board during the early years of IMDB.
shareIt's very 80s and has a juvenile, mischievous 12 year old boy feel to it. People who enjoy movies aimed at 12 year old boys would enjoy this.
shareThat's something that bothered me too. See, my brother first watched it when we were kids, and I only saw part of the film. The story does appeal to kids, but only so far. I'll never forget how my brother laughed his head off over the pranks Brian and Maurice pulled on the adults in town, and the kids had to take the blame instead.
It's not appealing to adults at all. In fact, I tried to re-watch it years later, and not only was it darker and not as funny as I remembered, it seems the only "magical" part of the monsters' world was the glowing sparkles you saw floating around in the air when first entering that place. Everything else was dark, dirty, and unsettling, and the pranks were grosser than I remembered.
The story also had some disturbing implications over the monsters' behaviors in their world, as well as the fact that Brian really didn't do himself or his friends any favors getting involved. Maurice is only appealing in the fact that he's the least-nasty of the monsters and genuinely wanted to help the kids, but his relationship with Brian had to end due to it causing more harm than good.
I did find it very amusing how at the end, the kids ended up in Malibu because they had to get out of the Monster World before the sun rose, and it had already rose everywhere in America, save for California, and then Brian had to call his parents and have them pick him and his friends up.