MOUSEHUNT (1997) **1/2 Children's comedy in which a corpse is jettisoned into a sewage hole in the opening scene. This is Roald Dahl's fault, even though he didn't write it. Gore Verbinski presents his mouse tale in shades of grey and brown, which allows him to do things like move into a Soviet-style industrial strike without changing the mood. That's not all that he does though: as the film settles into something along the lines of Wile E. Coyote meets Home Alone (except that it's a mouse instead of a Culkin), with perhaps an element of The Deer Hunter (Christopher Walken as the hired varmint assassin, in the film's brilliant scenes) mixed in to spice, Verbinski maintains an almost dignified air by sticking to classical music; even when heavy metal would seem the obvious choice for the Tarzan Mouse vs. Catzilla showdown. Will the highly individualized mouse be welcomed in Castro's Cuba, or will it become a bourgeois boss to Nathan Lane and Lee Evans' proles? No, really, that's part of the plot. Or something.
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