Josh Smith

Just saw this for the first time today, and... Wow. Expectations are blown completely out of the water. At first glance, it looks like one of those cheap rip-off films that live in Wal-Mart's bargain bin, but Thunder and The House of Magic takes a lot of familiar ideas and combines them in a unique and, dare I say, iconic way, with pretty good voice acting and stellar visuals. It's about a cat who gets abandoned on the curb and winds up at the house of a magician with a bunch of cool sentient toys and gadgets. The magician's rabbit and mouse try to run the cat off but he finds his way back in and the magician adopts him. Then he ends up proving himself to them by helping them thwart the magician's real estate agent nephew who wants to sell the house out from under him. Pretty standard plot, a bad guy wants the hero's house, pets/toys try to save their home. But the home in this film is a mansion belonging to an eccentric magician, and they really play off of the possibilities with that kind of setting to set it apart from films like Toy Story.