IN Rob Letterman’s film, Jack Black plays R.L. Stine, well-known to kids in the 9 to, say, 13 years cohort whose fervid imagination has made him a very best-seller – 400+ million copies since 1962.

The audience at Canberra’s first screening of Letterman’s film comprised a few grownups probably in mid-30s to mid 40s, accompanying progeny in that cohort. No littlies. No adolescents. And me the only other adult.

The film’s monster genre is valid enough – the Abominable Snowman, the bi-pedal werewolf, an invasion of garden gnomes, a truly scary giant mantis and more. Three others have an ongoing place in the plot – Snappy the ventriloquist’s dummy, the invisible boy and one human character.

In the film, Stine stores his manuscripts in locked books. When Zack (Dylan Minette) and his mom relocate to Madison, Delaware, he and newfound local friends Champ (Ryan Lee) and Stine’s daughter Hannah (Odeya Rush) accidentally cause all the manuscripts to get unlocked. Madison’s in for a bad night as monsters run rampant through its streets. Snappy gets them to burn the manuscripts. How to lock up the monsters?

This plot could, indeed should, have led to a agreeable little film to entertain the young. But the screenplay by Darren Lamke and Scott Alexander doesn’t do the material justice. In a film based on books, the screenplay bears strong implications of having been written by people whose only reading has been graphic novels uncomplicated by text. That’s insulting to the film’s target audience and grownups on nostalgia trips revisiting Stine.

At Capitol 6, Palace Electric, Hoyts, Limelight

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