Frankenweenie
(2012)
Tim Burton may have gone full
circle, from making fare forcibly skewed towards Disney’s more sugary
sensibilities (even if the 1984 Frankenweenie
short came about during their “dark period”) to actually seeing the world that
way. I don’t count myself among the many who believe Burton has completely lost
his way, but I do wish there was more of the unfettered abandon found in his
first couple of films.
His movies have always been
stylistically and narratively erratic, and there are few unqualified successes
in his filmography (Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,
Beetlejuice, Ed Wood). Yet, most of the time, his offerings are at least
diverting. The problem lies in his “brand” whackiness; it can easily lead to
fatigue setting in (Alice in Wonderland,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
That feeling of overkill of the same schtick; “Stop it now, Tim. Please”. Nevertheless,
I would even defend several of his movies that are considered indefensible (Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows).
Frankweenie, from its title down, is a cute riff on Universal’s
1930s adaptations of Mary Shelly. As such, the only disappointing thing about
it is that it is a riff that never surprises. This is exactly what you’d expect
of a Burton movie about a Frankenstein mutt. It’s the director’s second
animated feature, following on from the so-so Corpse Bride (many assume he helmed The Nightmare Before Christmas, but that was Henry Selick who was also
responsible for the first rate Coraline).
Visually, this is highly accomplished, as you’d expect if you surrounded
yourself with a gang of animation pros. But the slickness of the stop-motion
(so seamless, I thought it must be CG) is only matched by the manufactured
quirkiness and unthreatening gothic veneer.
While I’m sure they saw potential
dollar signs when Burton announced his intention to make a full-length feature
from Frankenweenie, I doubt that
Disney was overly keen when opted to shoot it in black and white. Sure, it can
be a draw under the right circumstances (The
Artist) but are kids really going to want to watch something devoid of
colour? It seems not; the movie is his least successful, but for his other
black and white picture (Ed Wood).
Credit to him for going that route (as the director of one of the studio’s
biggest hits, Alice in Wonderland,
it’s little surprise Disney indulged him) but it only adds to the sense hat
this is inconsequential whimsy; a side project he turned to when he wasn’t
working with Johnny.
John August’s screenplay is his
fifth for Burton (although Dark Shadows
was rewritten, much to August’s chagrin) and it repeats the set up and gags of
the short fairly closely. There’s the road accident where Victor’s (Charlie
Tahan) dog Sparky meets his doom, the bolt in his neck, his tail falls off and
he springs leaks, the pet graveyard (“Goodbye
Kitty”), next-door poodle Persephone complete with Bride of Frankenstein hairdo, and the overt lift of the end of Frankenstein as the dog is chased to an
old mill. Burton’s short is lovingly adorned with an array of cartoonish
actors, from Paul Bartel as the next door neighbour to Daniel Stern and Shelley
Duvall as Victor’s parents.
The all-out parody of the feature
version is adorned with more overt grotesques. If Victor’s parents are fairly
normal (voiced by Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara) his fellow school kids are
a collection of weirdos and crazies. His teacher, Mr Ryzkruski (Martin Landau)
is modelled on Vincent Price. Edgar E Gore (Atticus Shaffer) is a delightfully
horrid little hunchback, a little too eager to experiment with dead creatures
(first fish, and then a decomposing rat); “Your
dog is alive!” Nassor (Short again) is a Boris Karloff lookalike.
Winona Ryder returns to Burton land after a more than 20-year gap as Elsa van
Helsing. Best of all is “Weird Girl” (O’Hara again), an original character who exceeds
any of the other new inventions. Her cat Mr Whiskers has premonitionary dreams
and she offers gifts of cat faeces (“Did
you get that out of the litter box?”) Both she and her cat possess eyes
like saucers, and Mr Whiskers looks permanently startled/less than keen on his
owner’s weird tendencies.
Indeed, it’s in setting the scene
that Burton’s movie is at its best. The third act monster rampage is awfully
familiar and isn’t especially witty or clever (there’s a monster rat, a bat cat
(Mr Whiskers), a mummy hamster, a kaiju turtle and some sea monkey monsters);
such homages have been done much better many times before.
The design of Sparky is a
shameless rip-off of Family Dog (on
which Burton was Executive Producer and Design Consultant) and more effective
in that regard than the short’s English bull terrier. But Burton seems to get
cold feet over the grizzlier aspects of his premise; Sparky clearly starts out
as a rotting pet, surrounded by flies and with bits dropping off him. I
expected the decay element to develop, but Sparky becomes disappointingly
sanitised and sanitary.
Burton also feels the need to tack
on an overt moral absent from his short. Sure, the 1984 film features a “Don’t
judge by appearances” subtext (rendered redundant here by the freak show
townsfolk) but there’s also an absence of judgement on the rights and wrongs of
returning a canine from the grave. The director has never been especially
interested in moralising, but he occasionally falls victim to the curse of many
an otherwise decent filmmaker; sentiment wins out. Emotional range has never
been his strongest suit and he wisely avoids such material most of the time (Big Fish might be his only film where
the emotional content is justified and has some depth to it).
Here, the
“against nature, dangers of science-unleashed” theme is embarrassingly
dispensed with, but not in a glib rambunctious manner (as might have been seen
from the director of Beetlejuice,
rather than the guy who called the shots on Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory). The film has added multiple manifestations of
lightning-struck pets in order to flesh out a third act absent from the half
hour incarnation. So the message becomes, “It’s okay to reanimate corpses just
as long as you really love them” (an endorsement for necrophiliacs everywhere, then).
You can tell Burton doesn’t really “feel” his message; it’s necessary baggage
for a family movie (“Reanimating a
corpse. It’s very… upsetting” is more illustrative of his natural disregard
for such attitudes).
Apparently Burton is developing Beetlejuice 2; is it too much to hope he
can summon the anarchic revelry of the original? Frankenweenie is a wholly respectful expansion of the short. Which
is part of the problem. It’s the sort of thing Burton could knock-off in his
sleep. Perhaps next year’s Big Eyes
will prove a shot in the arm, and he’ll start trying again. At very least, it
has the pedigree of the writers of his best film (Ed Wood; Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski).
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