Mouse Hunt
1997 film by Gore Verbinski
Mouse Hunt is a 1997 American slapstick black comedy film written by Adam Rifkin and directed by Gore Verbinski in his feature film directorial debut. It stars Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Maury Chaykin, and Christopher Walken. The film follows two Laurel and Hardy-like brothers in their struggle against one small but crafty house mouse for possession of a mansion which was willed to them by their father. While the film is set in the late 20th century, styles range humorously from the 1940s to the 1990s.
It used real live mice, along with occasional computer-generated imagery and animatronic robot mice, and was the first family film to be released by DreamWorks Pictures. They released it in the United States on December 19, 1997, to mixed reviews, but it was a commercial success, earning $125.4 million on the box office against a budget of $38 million. The film features one of William Hickey's final roles. The film was dedicated to his memory.
Plot
String magnate Rudolph Smuntz dies, bequeathing his financially cash-strapped factory and a dilapidated Victorian mansion to his sons Ernie and Lars. Following the will reading, both brothers suffer setbacks in their lives—Ernie, who shunned the family business to become a chef, accidentally loses his restaurant when a cockroach hidden in a box of cigars he inherited from his father's estate contaminates a meal he is serving to the mayor, causing the mayor to suffer a fatal heart attack, while Lars is thrown out by his greedy wife April, after he honored a promise to his late father to refuse letting a rival company, Zeppco International, buy the factory.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mouse Hunt” is 1997 film by Gore Verbinski. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mouse, Hunt and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1997 film by Gore Verbinski” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q685163. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mouse Hunt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.