This movie takes one of R.L.Stine’s book series (there are currently 182 Goosebump books) and makes a merry mash-up of it all. Jack Black plays RL Stine as a recluse, living in a small town in Delaware. When new neighbours move in, teenage Zach (Dylan Minette) can’t help himself and finds himself sneaking into Stine’s house one night. When he accidentally drops one of Stine’s Goosebump manuscripts on the floor, it unleashes the monster inside…
In the depths of the cold war a Russian agent Rudolf Abel (actually a KGB colonel called Vilyam Fisher, though the movie does not reveal this), played by Mark Rylance, is arrested. The US bar council asks a prominent attorney called James Donovan (played by Tom Hanks), who made his name at the Nuremberg Trials but now works in Insurance, to take on the role of defending Abel – they want American justice to be seen to be done before Abel is inevitably convicted and possibly executed.