Review of Frankenweenie (2012) by Rob S — 25 Jul 2015

Man, I admittedly hate Tim Burton's filmography except for a few titles such as Big Fish and Sleepy Hollow, but this has to be the worst Tim Burton film I have seen in a long time. Frankenweenie was below my expectations, and I set my expectations pretty low for this film.

This film felt like it was really rushed in the production and post- production stages. One thing I cannot believe is that there was little emotion, let alone any characterization at all, in the adult characters of this film, excluding the science teacher played by Martin Landau. While Victor was animated to actually have emotions, exhibiting grief, fear, determination, all through well-animated facial expressions, the adults seemed to have one expression each throughout the movie. Way to put little life in the adults, Burton; I know this is a children's film (in fact, this movie is the epitome of a children's film) but please put more effort into the world of the story as a whole next time you decide to make an animated film.

Plot points/conversations/crucial moments sometimes went by too quickly to have the significance they were meant to have. One example of this is when Mr. Frankenstein is trying to get it into Victor's head that experimenting with the dead is something nobody should get involved with. The sad thing is he conveys this to Victor in two sentences, and then they're all off to find Sparky - or undead Sparky, if you prefer. Well done dad, life lesson learned.

Since this is a children's film and filmmakers have to meet what children can "understand" (children aren't necessarily stupid, you know) some things are left with little to no explanation, leaving the children who view this film to choose whether they buy into it or not. I may not be a child, but I am a viewer, and I barely bought any of the movie because it was so void of explanation. Victor sees his science teacher use electricity to create muscle spasms in a dead frog, and he suddenly understands how to bring dead animals back to life with electricity (specifically lightning)? Face it Burton, you just needed a way to reference the original Frankenstein, and with the little explanation involved, you put some plot points together quite sloppily.

The film was even uninteresting when important issues were raised. There is a scene which had so much potential but fell flat; it is the scene where the townspeople are at a P.T.A. meaning, upset with what Martin Landau's character has been teaching the kids. This could have been a good commentary on how people are offended when evolution is taught or when somebody is trying to convince the children of what is not the truth, such as the South winning the Civil War. But no, the people are angry simply because the man is "strange" and "weird," pretty much disregarding the fact that the people were upset in the first place because a child was hurt. Even if they went back to that child being hurt, the teacher had nothing to do with this - he just wanted them to make a project for the science fair.

Which brings me to what I hated the most about the film. One of the main plots of the movie - I would call it subplot A - is who would win the science fair. As if I cared, Burton. All this did was give the other kids incentive to pursue raising the dead on their own which didn't really amount to anything anyway. The film ends before the so-called science fair, so this subplot isn't even resolved. With the ending being ambiguous, the viewers can probably guess "oh, Victor will win since he brought Sparky back to life," but that didn't even have to do with the science fair; it was something personal to Victor.

This might entertain very young children, but if you're in your teens or older, or if you're a very young cinephile I would advise you to skip this film and maybe skip some rocks in a nearby pond for an hour and a half - it's a better way to spend the duration of this film.