The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations

Contributed by The Editor.

One of the best parts of the delightful animated movie Monster House is that it is essentially undatable. The film relies on character and situational humor rather than modern pop-culture references. A movie like Shrek, which relies heavily on pop-culture references, is pinpointed at a certain date. Twenty years from now, will people get references to Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible? However, just because a movie doesn’t rely on overt pop-culture doesn’t mean that we can’t determine when it takes place. Even without the caption at the beginning of the movie, we can tell that The Iron Giant takes place in the 1950s.

So, when does Monster House take place? I contend that the movie takes place c. 1987. I also believe that the exact date was made deliberately fuzzy, so it wouldn’t quite feel like it’s taking place at any precisely definable year.

• Technology:
  • Z uses a cassette tape, not a CD.
  • Skull uses a pager, not a cell phone.
• Cars: The cars in the movie are decidedly not modern. Furthermore, they look much like late 1980s car models.
• Video games:
  • Thou Art Dead is graphically similar to other platform arcade games of the late 1980s (c.f. Ghosts ‘N Goblins (1985), Altered Beast (1988)).
  • There is a short clip of Chowder playing a home game system, the graphics of which resemble the quasi-abstract style of some Atari 2600 or Intellivision games.
• Tone: The tone of the movie seems highly influenced/inspired by 1980s “kids in danger” movies. (c.f. Explorers (1985), The Goonies (1985), Monster Squad (1987)) Hallmarks of these types of films are:
  • The kids go on an adventure without their parents. Often adults actually hinder or interrupt the adventure.
  • Supernatural or sci-fi elements are common. The filmmakers were not afraid to make these elements somewhat scary, even at the risk of frightening younger members of the audience.
  • The kids are in real danger of getting killed.

The staff here at The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations encourages intelligent readers to add examples or counterexamples of the principal thesis in the comments section.