`MOUSE HUNT' RULED BY CUTE, FURRY STARS.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Daily News Film Critic

``Mouse Hunt'' is ``Home Alone'' with a rodent. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, considering the mouse in question is pretty darn cute and incorporates more humanity in his mayhem than Macaulay Culkin ever did.

In what is essentially a ``Tom & Jerry'' cartoon come to life, Nathan Lane and Lee Evans play a couple of doofus brothers who inherit a dilapidated old house when their father dies. The mansion turns out to be the long-lost work of a famous architect and worth at least $10 million.

The brothers hope to sell it through an auction, but first they must evict the home's sole occupant - an adorable little mouse who has more brainpower than the brothers combined.

Director Gore Verbinski is the man who brought the Budweiser frogs to life, so you know he has a way with animals - real and otherwise. And as long as the mouse is on the screen, ``Mouse Hunt'' comes off as manic, spirited fun.

The lead rodent - and there were actually 60 mice used along with animatronic and computer-generated vermin - is more believable and certainly more heroic than most movie action heroes. It flings olives, outwits mousetraps and sends a fearsome feline named Catzilla to its grave.

During one particularly memorable scene, the mouse runs an obstacle course between dozens of mousetraps and then sets them off in a chain reaction that backfires on the brothers.

Unfortunately, when the mouse is away, the movie doesn't play. Lane and Evans are gifted comics, but Laurel and Hardy they ain't.

In ``Mouse Hunt,'' people exist mostly to get whacked in the head with a variety of heavy objects and fall down stairs and hills and through ice-covered lakes. Again, it's the ``Tom & Jerry'' cartoon in the flesh, with lots of Three Stooges and Wile E. Coyote thrown in for good measure. Kids will love it. And at least adults won't be bored.

The only human who holds the screen with the mouse is Christopher Walken, who plays an exterminator so intent on understanding his prey that he'll even sample its poop pellets to get inside its mind.

Of course, the fact that he says the rat's diet is calcium-deficient after we just saw it consume an entire block of cheese proves the film is more concerned with pratfalls than verbal fun.

The best joke in ``Mouse Hunt'' is the fact that DreamWorks SKG, home of bitter former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, has made a movie about a mouse (Mickey?) that must be exterminated.

Lane even tweaks Disney in one scene, greeting a guest with ``Hakuna Matata.'' That's from ``The Lion King'' of course, and for anyone who has forgotten, it means ``no worries.'' It's a line certainly applicable to this movie's mindless, and often enjoyable, brand of fun.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Mouse Hunt'' (PG; language, comic sensuality and mayhem).

The stars: Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Christopher Walken and Maury Chaykin.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by Adam Rifkin. Released by DreamWorks Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 37 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.