YMMV / MouseHunt

• Alternative Character Interpretation: April's a complete Gold Digger bitch throughout the movie, but after being saved from choking by one of the millionaires at the auction, one can't help but wonder if she actually developed genuine interest in him.
• Angst? What Angst?: The mayor's two daughters don't seem particularly distressed that their dad just passed out from shock after eating a cockroach; in fact, they're busy twirling the yellow tape while their mother is sobbing her eyes out! Worse still, he doesn't pull through.
• Awesome Music: Alan Silvestri's energetic music is a big help.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The opening, where the handle breaks on their father's coffin causing the other bearers to drop it and it slides down the church steps, hits a limo, and the father's corpse flips into the air and straight down an open manhole cover into the sewers.
  • Imagine if slapstick actually hurt and left you bruised and slightly bloodied. That's a good idea of this movie's humor.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Though the character is already deceased when the film starts, there is a flashback scene where the Smuntz brothers are visiting their father, played by William Hickey, while he is dying in the hospital. Bill Hickey himself ended up passing away shortly before filming was completed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During Ernie and Lars's big fight, Ernie gives a Shout-Out to The Producers when he yells "DOUBLE! DOUBLE!" Four years later, Nathan Lane would star in the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of the film referenced as the character who says that line (it's altogether possible that the show's earliest planning stages were occurring while this movie was being filmed). Incidentally, William Hickey (Rudolf) appeared as a drunk in the original film, and Lee Evans co-starred with Lane in the show's London production.
  • The resolution of the film, with the mouse coming to work with the brothers at the factory and help them make their string cheese, feels like a set-up for the start of the plot of Ratatouille.
• Jerkass Woobie: There's no denying that Ernie is the more abrasive and cynical of the brothers who is the most eager to kill off the titular mouse and has little to no respect for both the memory of his and Lars' father and their family's string business. However, it's also easy to feel sorry for Ernie when it's made clear that his bitterness is a result of old Rudolf seemingly not giving a rat's ass about his son's talent as a chef (no matter how hard Ernie tried to impress him with it) and expected him to continue running the string factory with Lars after he died even when Ernie had his own responsibilities to his restaurant. Then Ernie loses his beloved establishment over a circumstance he had no control over and is painted as the one responsible for the mayor's death by the press, and when he realizes the presence of the mouse in the manor that can catapult him back to fame, he's paranoid that he will lose his chance of regaining all that he lost from the cockroach fiasco.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Mouse itself is a sentient, mischievous animal who has made his home in a dilapidated mansion which it fiercely defends against new arrivals. When the Smuntz brothers move in after inheriting it from their late father and discover it to potentially be worth millions, the Mouse repeatedly and effortlessly outwits the Smuntz's efforts to kill it, even disposing of a psychotic cat and a seasoned exterminator whom it tortures to insanity. After the house is destroyed, it decides to make peace with the Smuntzes and helps them restore their father's string factory to produce cheese products.
• One-Scene Wonder: Christopher Walken has an extended cameo as an expert exterminator, who, of course, fails to take down the mouse. This being Walken, it goes without saying that the character is an eccentric Large Ham who takes to pest control like a member of a SWAT team.
• Squick:
  • The mayor eating the cockroach.
  • Right before the big finale...
    Lady: The raisins are a nice touch.
    Ernie: (Smiling) They're good, aren't they? (Takes two steps, and stops.) Raisins?
    • For those who don't get it, the "raisins" were the mouse's droppings.
  • Caesar voluntarily EATS one of the mouse's feces!
    Caesar: Slight calcium deficiency.
    • After which even the mouse gives a weirded out look to the audience through the camera.
• So Okay, It's Average: It’s generally agreed the movie had great ideas, but mediocre execution.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • If one pays closer attention to the bug bomb explosion, you can tell that it was actually four separate explosions in the form of a square◊ rather than just one large one, which makes no sense whatsoever.
  • The CGI on the cockroaches did not age well.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Could be considered a better Tom and Jerry movie than the first movie.
• Spiritual Successor: To Tom and Jerry — the film is effectively a live-action, movie-length Tom & Jerry plot, with the brothers in Tom's place.
• Strawman Has a Point: Lars' wife April is by no means a sympathetic character due to being a self-centered gold-digger who bitches out her husband and callously kicks him to the curb on Christmas for turning down a buyout offer from Zeppco in favor of keeping his promise to his late father. While April is framed as being in the wrong for not being more supportive towards Lars, her anger does hold some water when you rememberer the Smuntz String Factory is a decrepit shell of its former glory and Lars' deciding to place his loyalty to his father before the chance of financial stability is doing him more harm than good.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The film contains a cute little mouse and plays out like a live-action Tom and Jerry cartoon, but there are some curse words, a person who dies from choking on a bug, another whose corpse is thrown into the sewer, sexual references, and A LOT of black comedy. What makes this worse is that The Hub (now Discovery Family), a family channel, aired this movie! And even better is the reviews on the VHS box that say it's "fun for the whole family".

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