Review of Frankenweenie (2012) by Jacob B — 20 Oct 2018

The correct word to describe Frankenweenie would be endearing. Because that's just what it is. An endearing story about a boy and his undead dog. The visuals are nice, which is surprising considering you wouldn't expect a black-and-white movie to be visually pleasing but this movie pulls it off.

Since this is a Tim Burton movie, there are some great designs and some not-so-great. Due to the stylistic suck, some characters don't even have proper facial expressions and are just stuck with the same facial expression regardless of whether they're actually sad.

Keep in mind that the nature of the animation is because the animation for Corpse Bride was too good. It had such fluidity that people actually thought it was CGI which Burton felt undermined the beauty of the art form so he decides to go for a more choppy, occasionally missing frames approach to stand out compared to other stop-motion Halloween family flick ParaNorman.

The voice acting and script are also great especially from this science teacher guy during a PTA meeting who had balls of steel to tell them what he did. Frankenweenie probably doesn't need to exist even with the higher production values compared to the live-action short film this movie's based off of released in the '80s that actually got him FIRED from Disney.

In the end, though the movie is an endearing underrated stop-motion movie that proves that Tim Burton hasn't lost his eccentric charm.