Review: Frankenweenie (2012)

[Mark Leeper]

FRANKENWEENIE
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Tim Burton returns to his roots making a
feature-length version of one of the two short films
that made him famous. Filling the film with
references to classic horror and sci-fi films he tell
the story of teenage Victor Frankenstein who brought
his dog back to life as a cute and likeable patchwork
monstrosity. The story is pleasant enough in a
macabre sort of way, but it is much more coherent in
the parts updated from the original. The new material
takes a while to get going. And in some ways the use
of animation instead of the original live action takes
away from the fun of the film. Burton only occasionally
improves on what was in the 1984 version. Rating:
low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Thirty years ago a Tim Burton in his mid-twenties made two short
films for Disney Studios. The first was "Vincent", an animated
story of a boy who like Burton himself idolized Vincent Price and
his horror movies. The second of the films was "Frankenweenie", a
mostly live-action film of the boy who lost the dog he loved, but
was inspired by science class to bring the dog back to life. The
film was a winning send-up of horror films in general and of the
James Whale's Frankenstein films for Universal. Now Burton has
expanded his 27-minute short into an 87-minute all-animated film.
To do this he has essentially added a second concurrent story that
somehow is not quite as congenial.

The plot is simple. Teenager Victor Frankenstein loves his dog
Sparky more than anything else in the world. He is heart-broken
when the dog is hit by a car and dies. Then in science class sees
his teacher get a dead frog to kick its legs by shocking it with
electricity and Victor decides to use electricity to bring Sparky
back to life. In the new film several of Victor's classmates
decide they want to win the science fair and when the secret of
Victor's experiment leaks out they all get involved making monsters
of their own for the fair.

One has the feeling in the B story that Burton is trying to stretch
his work, even if only to a minimally feature-length film. When we
get some monsters toward the end they do not seem like they are
good ideas for monsters and they are not properly motivated in the
story. The A story is really not a lot changed from the original
film except for being animated. That does not always work in the
film's favor. When we see in each film Sparky transformed into a
prehistoric creature for a film Victor is making, it is much cuter
in the original with a live dog. As long a Sparky is already
animated adding the additional features is just not as endearing.

Another problem with the animated version is common to much of
Burton's animation. One can always recognize Tim Burton's and
production designer Rick Heinrich's style of animation. Normal
people have big, wide eyes with little black dot irises, small
pinched noses and mouths, and triangular tight faces. The most
expressive features are the eyebrows and maybe a small smile or
frown. That is all well and good, but somehow it short-circuits
the expression of emotion. The soul of drama is the actors'
emoting, and as cute as Burton's characters are, they have bland
faces that do not express emotion well. The science teacher and a
boy with a Peter Lorre voice diverge from the style. But the
science teacher has even less emotion in his face and the boy has a
constant wide grin, even when he is unhappy. The animation can
overcome this problem, but it is a definite handicap.

The film has a pleasant choral score by Tim Burton's regular
composer, Danny Elfman.

Undeniably Burton's first telling of the story has a great deal of
charm coming both from the clever film references and from the
presence of a live dog to help tell the story. The new version
adds an okay second plot and a trainload of horror film references.
It even adds a little political content advocating the importance
of science--real science, not the reanimating corpse kind. We lose
the charm of the live dog. (Any live dog. Bears would be nice
too. But a cat who communicates the way this one does should not
have made it past the first draft, Tim.) I rate FRANKENWEENIE a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142977/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frankenweenie_2012/>


Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2012 Mark R. Leeper