The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (Hostel), but in The House With a Clock in Its Walls, he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like Hugo, but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit.

The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.

The pleasures of the movie are mainly in the design of the Victorian house and its grounds, replete with a chair that behaves like a dog, and in the affection for re-creating the 1950s period, down to a surprise use for Ovaltine. Black is perhaps too sardonic a presence, but Blanchett — as a fellow spell-caster — takes evident pleasure in deadpanning lines like “I melted Salvador Dali’s watch once, right off his wrist.” Playing material like this with conviction is its own form of magic.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Breaking out of his teenybopper image, Parth Samthaan is all set to portray the intense Anurag Basu in Ekta Kapoor’s reboot of Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The serial that starts airing on STAR Plus from September 25 has Parth and Erica Fernandes playing the star-crossed lovers, Anurag and Prerna. t2 caught up with the actor at Taj Bengal for a chat.

Erica Fernandes and Parth Samthaan in Kasautii Zindagii Kay A still from Kasautii Zindagii Kay

Erica Fernandes and Parth Samthaan in Kasautii Zindagii Kay A still from Kasautii Zindagii Kay

Erica Fernandes and Parth Samthaan in Kasautii Zindagii Kay A still from Kasautii Zindagii Kay