Atomo-Vision...Rumble-Rama...Mant ('Half man, half ant - All terror!') has all the features of any self-respecting monster movie, and Cuban Missile crisis or no, when big Lawrence Woolsey rolls his all singing, all dancing extravaganza into Key West, the kids go wild for it.

In a sense Joe Dante's entire career has been remaking the pictures of his youth with variable results, from the affectionate, successful horror thrills of The Howling and Piranha to the noisy but empty-headed Innerspace. To date his best work is the darker flip side of the Spielberg airbrush - the spiteful Gremlins and the grossly undervalued (and tampered) The Burbs. Matinee is his most outright, warm-hearted love-letter, serving us as its centre-piece John Goodman's Woolsey, a hugely endearing huckster B-movie director rather less than one step removed from that great showman William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler), packing the cinema with every gimmick known to man, from seat buzzers to a man in an ill-fitting rubber suit. This stuff forms the core of the movie and, by extension, is its highlight as Dante clearly demonstrates an understanding of the inherent conventions, culminating in the spectacle of Mant itself with its cheesy effects, spurious scientific fact, and grievous overacting ("You may think he's your husband, but he's really an insect inside," says the doctor. "Insecticide! Where?" screams the unfortunate Mant). Dante is also sure enough of the form to pause along the way for an acute pastiche of those hugely aggravating Disney family features with the wickedly funny The Shook-Up Shopping Cart.

But alongside all this someone has unfortunately seen need for teen interest with Navy brat Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) as the new kid in town dealing with the twin traumas of school life and a father on the blockade ships. Dante's film is at its most unsure when it has the kids on screen, attempting to offer some sincerity at the beginning but, sensing its audience is more interested in Woolsey, grows increasing hysterical in tone, ultimately slipping into a welcome parody somewhat akin to John Waters' delicious Cry-Baby (are those pink flamingos outside Gene's home really an accident?) The more the movie sheds any semblance of the serious and builds to the all-stops out climax of the Mant preview itself, the better it becomes.

Dante is well served by a relatively low-key cast, from Goodman clearly having a fine old time with a gift of a role as the con-merchant selling bogus movie-magic, to the kids who acquit themselves far better than we really have a right to expect, steering largely clear of an easy cloying Spielberg-sentimentality. Elsewhere we get Robert Picardo's wonderful nervous wreck of a cinema manager with a radio permanently tuned to the Civil Defence channels, and the inspired double-act of would-be moral campaigners Dick Miller (inevitably) and John Sayles (world-class director in his own right who also penned Dante's first two horror hits) who disappear all too quickly from the action.

Ultimately Matinee only really puts a foot a wrong in its last reel, seemingly suddenly unsure of itself it throws half a dozen possible endings at the audience (outright comedy, rites of passage, melodrama, Cold War scare, et al) and somewhat over-eggs the pudding. But that aside this is prime grade homage, offering entertainment aplenty for the casual viewer and a knowing elbow in the ribs to devotees, and even saving a little extra for anyone prepared to sit through the end of the credits. Great fun.