Frankenweenie

In 1984 Tim Burton had made a live action black-and-white short film by the name of Frankenweenie, and it detailed the story of a boy and his dog, and how the boy, after losing the dog, uses pseudo-science to resurrect the canine in a similar fashion to that of the 1931 Frankenstein, hence the parody title. While the film was deemed too scary for a Disney license at the time it has since become a cult classic, even to the point where it got remade into a feature length animated film directed by Burton himself.

What was expected to be a boring rehash of the original short film turns out to be an exciting story filled with heart, science, and a cast of ironically colorful characters. The film is animated with the burton staple of stop-motion animation and presented in a black and white tone just like the original short.

The plot is basically the same this time around, starring Charlie Tahan as Victor Frankenstein and his best and only friend, a dog named Sparky. After sparky is killed in an automobile accident Victor uses his scientific talents to resurrect Sparky and turn him into a reanimated corpse that acts as if nothing happened save for a few stitches. The deviation from the original story comes when Victor’s classmates discover Victor’s secret and use it to reanimate their own passed pets and inadvertently create monstrous versions of the original animals.

It’s been a long time since Tim burton has done something original and I’m glad to say he still has that magic touch of cultish charm. The best thing about this movie happens to be the unexpected twists that come from it and how the general clichés often found in children’s movies seem to be minimal at best.

One problem with the movie is that it seems to have an abundance of characters that serve little to no purpose, and the characters made from the original seem to be a little too bland and made for the times which does distract from the best parts of the film.

The real hook of this movie that keeps it from being obscure would be all the new content and characters which also seem to be parody’s of horror icons themselves; my favorite being a deformed child named Edger “E” Gore who resembles the hunchback Igor in both name and look.

I have to recommend this movie because the world seems to be in a time when Halloween is steadily being forgotten about and I can see this movie along others like it such as Paranorman keep the spooky spirit alive. For good animation, hilariously fun to watch set pieces and a sense of originality in Hollywood’s desperate uptake of remakes this movie gets a thumbs up.