Mouse Hunt

When the once-wealthy string magnate Rudolf Smuntz dies, he leaves his factory and an abandoned Victorian mansion to his two sons; the dutiful and optimistic Lars, and venal cynic Ernie, who has ignored the family business to become a chef; he walks out of the reading of their father's will, taking a box of cigars. At Ernie's restaurant, a cockroach crawls out of the box and into a dish prepared for the mayor, causing him to have a fatal heart attack when he accidentally bites into the cockroach's head. Ernie's restaurant is shut down; causing him to lose his career and his home. Meanwhile, cord company Zeppco International offers Lars a buyout for the string factory, but Lars refuses after remembering a promise he made his father; Lars' greedy wife, April, kicks him out. Lars and Ernie (who just started working in a cheap diner) meet up, and with nowhere else to go, they spend the night in the mansion.

The brothers soon find themselves unable to sleep due to noises, which they discover to be caused by a mouse. By chance, they also discover the blueprints of the property, which reveal that the mansion, built in 1876, was the final design of a famous architect, Charles Lyle LaRue, and it would be worth a fortune if restored. The brothers decide to renovate and auction the mansion to recover their lives. They see the mouse again and Ernie, fearing a repeat of the cockroach incident, convinces Lars they must also get rid of it. Conventional methods fail when the mouse demonstrates himself to be exceptionally intelligent. The brothers resort to extreme measures to remove the mouse, including buying a monstrous Maine Coon cat named "Catzilla" and hiring an eccentric exterminator named Caesar; the mouse drops Catzilla to his death in a dumbwaiter, and traumatizes Caesar by dragging him through the mansion using his truck's winch line.

With Ernie having borrowed against the mansion's mortgage to help pay for the renovations, the bank informs them they will be evicted in two days unless they reimburse the money. With their limited funds the brothers cannot pay their workers, causing them to go on strike. Ernie finds Zeppco's business card and arranges a meeting to secretly accept their buyout offer, betrayed that Lars had turned Zeppco down without consulting him first. Lars goes to the factory to manufacture enough string to pay off the mortgage and is met by April, who has learned of the mansion's value and takes Lars back, giving him the funds they need. Ernie's meeting with Zeppco's representatives goes awry when he attempts to impress some women and is hit by a bus. The brothers return to the mansion and find it surrounded by emergency personnel taking Caesar away after he was outsmarted by the mouse.

The brothers chase the mouse with a shotgun and accidentally ignite a bug bomb Caesar had dropped, blowing a massive hole in the floor. Lars overhears Zeppco on the answering machine, revealing Ernie's plans, and the two argue with the mouse watching. When Lars throws an orange at Ernie, he ducks underneath when it hits the mouse, who is struck and stunned, but is still alive. The brothers cannot bring themselves to kill him and mail him in a box addressed to Fidel Castro. The brothers reconcile and finish their renovations. The night of the auction, Lars discovers the postal box returned to the mansion due to insufficient postage and a hole chewed in it, while Ernie sees the mouse on his podium as he speaks to the auctioneers. As the auction begins, the brothers attempt to flush the mouse out with a garden hose, filling an inner wall of the mansion with water until it bursts, washing the auctioneers out and causing the mansion to collapse. April leaves with a wealthy bidder and the brothers are left with nothing, but take solace that the mouse was surely killed in the collapse.

The brothers spend the night in the factory, unaware the mouse has survived and followed them. Seeing their sorry state, the mouse takes pity on them and activates the factory's machinery, dropping a block of cheese into the wax boiler to produce a ball of string cheese. Inspired, the brothers renovate the factory to produce string cheese and other cheese-based products, restoring their fortunes. Lars finds a new girlfriend and runs the factory with Ernie as his chef, and the mouse as their taste-tester for new cheese combinations.

• Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz, a man who refused heirdom to his father's string factory to become a chef.
• Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz, Ernie's brother and the heir to their father's string factory.
• Maury Chaykin as Alexander Falko, a wealthy LaRue collector.
• Christopher Walken as Caesar, an odd and eccentric exterminator hired by the Smuntz brothers to rid them of the mouse.
• Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz, Lars' money-hungry former wife.
• William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz, a string magnate and the late father of Ernie and Lars.
• Eric Christmas as Ernie and Lars' lawyer.
• Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe, a LaRue historian.
• Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKrinkle.
• Debra Christofferson as Ingrid, a Belgian model.
• Camilla Søeberg as Hilde, a Belgian model.
• Susan Blommaert as Ms. Park Avenue
• Ian Abercrombie as the auctioneer.
• Annabelle Gurwitch as Roxanne Atkins, a photographer.
• Eric Poppick as Theodore Plumb, the banker.
• Ernie Sabella as Maury, a worker at the cat shelter.
• Jack Angeles as Kennel Employee
• Thom Barry as a doctor (scenes deleted)

Mouse Hunt was released in North America on December 19, 1997 and opened in the #4 spot.[2] The film was released in the United Kingdom on April 3, 1998, and opened at #2, behind Titanic.[3][4]

• List of American films of 1997

Wikiquote has quotations related to MouseHunt (film).

• official website at the Wayback Machine (archived December 2, 1998)
• Mouse Hunt at IMDb
• Mouse Hunt at AllMovie
• Mouse Hunt at the TCM Movie Database
• Mouse Hunt at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Mouse Hunt at Box Office Mojo
• Mouse Hunt at Rotten Tomatoes