Mousehunt

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Mousehunt

Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Produced by	Bart Brown, Bruce Cohen, Tony Ludwig
Written by	Adam Rifkin
Starring	Nathan Lane Lee Evans Christopher Walken William Hickey
Distributed by	Dreamworks
Release date(s)	19 December 1997
Running time	96 min.
Language	English
Budget	unknown
IMDb profile

Mousehunt is a 1997 slapstick comedy film directed by Gore Verbinski, scored by Alan Silvestri and released by DreamWorks SKG.

Starring Nathan Lane and Lee Evans, it concerns two brothers who, upon inheriting an antique house, must rid it of a troublesome mouse who comedically foils their efforts to exterminate him.

1 Plot
2 Goofs
3 Cast
4 Trivia
5 External link

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It revolves around Lars (Lee Evans) and Ernie (Nathan Lane) Smuntz, two "down on their luck" brothers, sons of a wealthy, deceased string merchant (William Hickey). The movie opens with their father's funeral, where things quickly turn wacky. As the brothers carry their father's coffin down the church stairs, an argument ensues between them about whether Lars' semi-gray suit is black enough for a solemn event like a funeral. This results in Lars' angrily jerking at the poorly manufactured coffin, causing the handle to come off and send their father thundering down the stairs. As cries of shock come from the crowd, the coffin hits a parked limousine and the corpse flies out of the coffin and into an open manhole cover.

Lars and Ernie's father has apparently left the two brothers with his quasi-antique string factory along with a number of "personal effects" to the tune of a box of Cuban cigars, a spoon collection, a ceramic egg and a crumbling old mansion estate.

Although his father was a fairly successful string merchant, Ernie is a high class, hotshot chef, who never liked string. His father's inheritance spells disaster for him when he brings the box of cigars (containing a cockroach) with him to his restaurant, Chez Ernie; the visiting Mayor eats the roach and subsequently dies of shock. With his restaurant closed, Ernie finds employment in a seamy little fast food restaurant, Rimpy's, until he meets Lars. Lars, who inherited his father's fanaticism for the string industry, refused to sell the factory for a fortune and enraged his temperamental wife April, who kicked him out of his own home. The two brothers wander the streets homeless for a while before they remember that they do have a home--the old estate from their father.

The brothers hadn't thought much of their inheritance until they discover the house's blueprints (dated 1876), after an insane night of frights at their "inheritance." The brothers discover it's a long-lost architectural achievement worth millions.

However, the house does already have an occupant...an intelligent and tenacious little mouse. Fearing an incident similar to that of the aforementioned cockroach, Ernie decides to get rid of the mouse before he and Lars renovate and auction off the house. Hilarity ensues when they try every possible way to get rid of the little thing, from using a vacuum (it exploded due to it being inserted in a sewage pipe), to a vicious overgrown tiger-like domestic cat nicknamed Catzilla (which the mouse ultimately slaughtered through a hidden elevator after breaking the strings), to a huge mousetrap array (it backfires), to the eccentric exterminator Caesar (Christopher Walken) (who gets yanked out of the house by his own equipment).

Ultimately, during the final encounter with the mouse before the House Auction, Ernie and Lars use a shotgun to accidentally shoot Caesar's obscured flea-bomb (Ernie was aiming down a hole in the floor that the mouse had gone through) and the ensuing explosion makes a massive hole in the floor. It is then that they realize each other's attempts to sell and keep the factory without telling one another, leading to the famous "I hate you!" scene in which Lars throws an orange at Ernie which accidentally knocks the mouse out. Taking their chance, but unable to bring themselves to killing the unconscious creature, they put the mouse in a box, stamp it, and mail it to Havana, Cuba.

Unfortunately, during the auction, Lars discovers that the box has been returned to its sender, due to insufficient weight of the item, and that the mouse has chewed its way out.

During their secret antics with the mouse during the auction, Lars and Ernie attempt to flush the mouse from the walls using a garden hose, leading to major wreckage of the house immediately before the culmination of the auction. The bidders are washed out the front door of the house just before it falls down completely. The brothers are left broke...until the mouse discovers how to make string cheese using the old factory. The brothers, with the mouse as their resident cheese expert, establish a successful new business by renovating the old factory.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Goofs

The cockroach seen is a hissing cockroach. These insects are native to Madagascar and kept as exotic pets. They would not be found in North America. It was not said that Smutz sr. kept pet roaches.

[edit] Cast

Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz
Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz
Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz
William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz
Maury Chaykin as Alex Falko
Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe
Ian Abercombie as The Auctioneer
Eric Christmas as The Smuntz' Lawyer
Christopher Walken as Caeser, the Exterminator
Ernie Sabella as Maury, the Pound Caretaker
Alex Koch as Len, a photographer
Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKringle

[edit] Trivia

The Spanish-language title is "Hard to Hunt" (Duro de Cazar), probably akin to the movies Die Hard (Duro de Matar) and Spy Hard (Duro de Espiar).

During the film, there is a somewhat ghostly portrait of their father to which the brothers rarely paid attention. As the film progresses, the portrait changes in both tone and expression to emphasize various moods and scenes as brought forth by the rest of the film.

Several different mice had to be used for filming, each specializing in a special maneuver (such as a mouse that was an expert at jumping), according to promotional material. Additionally, a computer-generated image of the mouse was used for several scenes.

Some references to The Lion King (1994), in which Nathan Lane played the voice of Timon the Meerkat, can be found in the film. During the reception prior to the auction, Ernie Smuntz bows to a sheik who is seeking to bid for his home and greets him with the words "Hakuna Matata," referencing the song from the film of the same name. Ernie Sabella, who played Timon's warthog friend Pumbaa in The Lion King, also appears as the manager of a kennel who sells the cat.

Lane makes another reference to Disney at the end of the film when he mentions to the mouse that other companies who used a mouse as their spokesperson seemed to do well. He seemed to be referring to Mickey Mouse.