Walt Disney Pictures, Tim Burton Animation Co., Tim Burton Productions
Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Winona Ryder, Robert Capron, Conchata Ferrell, James Hiroyuki Liao, Tom Kenny
Victor Frankenstein is a young boy with a dog named Sparky who is very interested in science and the upcoming science fair at school. Sparky is hit by a car and is killed, but young Victor brings him back to life by a stroke of lightning. He tries to keep it a secret, but as the family, the neighborhood, and finally the whole town finds out about it, everyone, it seems, wants a part of the poor boy. This black and white cartoon is a homage by “Master or Weird” Tim Burton (director) to the original Frankenstein legend and particularly the original film.
Ok, so I get it that Mr. Burton does weird cartoon stories (The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, etc.), and that he’s very creative in his own way. I even like a lot of his work. But I was left flat by this film. I think it’s pretty dark and probably pretty boring for young kids and will probably frighten them, and I don’t think there is enough meat and potatoes for anyone older. It seems like the story is just lacking so much. A couple jabs at Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, there’s not much else going on here. It just seems they took a short story and turned it into a long, short story. I found a lot of it boring, and it lacked anything to hold my interest. Now I know that true Burton fans will adore his work, and I know people will be claiming that I totally missed his genius in the story, and the whole point went over my head. It’s that it’s too artsy and I’m just too unsophisticated to realize how genius it is. Well, I call that the emperor has no clothes, and that it was a good idea, and a nice attempt to pay tribute to the original, but simply more work needed to be put into it to develop the story a bit past this superficial thing we got. It could have been so much better, but it doesn’t have near the depth of his other works. Even Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, although one really weird story, has a lot more depth and detail than this story does. Certainly not up to the other cartoon fantasies he has developed, it just left me wanting a lot more and feeling I’ve been had. There have been a lot of comparisons to Paranorman. Paranorman wins hands down!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
