Review of Frankenweenie (2012) by Sherry L — 13 Mar 2013

Frankenweenie is Tim Burton's latest stop-motion flick in gothic style, which immediately became critic's pet. And for many good reasons!

*Young Victor Frankenstein is a boy with several talents and interests like making short movies with his beloved dog, Sparky, and conducting rather dangerous experiments on the attic. Victor is a natural born scientist, and to his delight, his class has gotten a new science professor, Mr. Rzykruski. Mr. Rzykruski gives the class a special task; to make a science project during a couple of weeks, and later present it.

During the same time, Victor's dog Sparky is accidentally hit by a car and killed while trying to fetch a baseball for Victor. Devastated and shattered over the death of his very best friend, Victor later gets the idea to try to revive Sparky, which he actually manages to do. With Sparky revived, (but not completely intact), Victor must keep his dog hidden from his parents for not causing alarm. Eventually, he tells the secret to a couple of friends, who now know what to present as their science project!

Things starts to get out of hand when Victor along with his friends start to perform the experiment on all sorts of animals, who sometimes tend to come back to life in different (and more dangerous!) shapes!*.

This is a brilliant Frankenstein-spoof by Master of Suspense of Stop-motion (the title Master of Suspense, is like you know already taken, so I came up with this instead :). Charming, adorable and cute with a morbid touch, which is Burton's signature mark. I watched this movie in 3D, and I can recommend it if you already have the necessairy device. If not, the movie is still strong enough to stand on it's own, and in all honesty doesn't need any novelties of that kind to be appreciated. But... I haven't watched the 1984 original, but have a hard time believing it's better than this wonderful 2012-version.

Like often with Burton's movies, Frankenweenie is flirting a lot with old classic horror movies... to take an example (besides the fact the movie is in black and white!); when a poodle is getting hit by the light and get the very same hairdo as Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein.

Also the surroundings where the story takes place, reminds a lot of the settings in the 1931 Frankenstein-movie, with the old mill and all.

Typical Tim Burton-humour!

Frankenweenie, for me, definately belongs to the same league as Nightmare Before Christmas!

A very heart-warming and entertaining movie, which I will definately watch again sometime!