You’re not a clown, you’re a physician.

Victor Frankenstein

(2015)

(SPOILERS) Well, Max Landis did it again. Gave birth to an unmitigated pile, I mean. One wonders if his involvement in Chronicle was a fluke, and additionally wonders why dad didn’t just say “Don’t you bleedin’ dare, son” regarding junior’s designs on remaking An American Werewolf in London. Victor Frankenstein can’t even lay claim to being hilariously bad – at least Sir Ken’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has that going for it – and shows that even the usually reliable Paul McGuigan can come a cropper if his material is old rope.

A few weeks back I credited Daniel Radcliffe with a decent performance in Swiss Army Man. He’s back into the red with this, a truly woeful turn in which he gives Landis’ dialogue every splinter of woodenness it deserves. Poor Igor doesn’t even have a name when first we meet him, a rubbish circus clown – who looks like a cross between Helena Bonham Carter and Edward Scissorhands, just with less polished application of pan cake than either – abused by his fellows (“It’s hard to judge cruelty when you’ve never known kindness” he observes, insightfully). But what’s this? Not-yet-Igor is actually a genius: “When I wasn’t performing, I served as the company’s doctor”.

That was about the only moment in the movie where I had a good laugh. Everything else was just too, too sad: “I don’t know if the science of life captured my imagination. I think it just helped me escape”. Yep, Hollywood execs pay millions for his kind of shit. It’s like gold dust to them. Wait, here’s some more: “Little did I know that on a chilly London evening, I would meet the man who would change my life for ever”. Such lines are all the better savoured when served up by one of the most successful young former child actors around. It turns out Igor, in Landis’ “imaginative” retelling, isn’t a hunchback at all. He just has a huge cyst that needs draining. How charming. Before long, he’s back to being a fine upstanding young thespian.

James McAvoy, who clearly and misguidedly sees this as a chance to “do a Cumberbatch” with the brash, energetic, socially-difficult scientist, was probably egged on by ex-Sherlock director McGuigan (who also furnishes the piece with Sherlock-esque subjective genius visuals, as both Igor and Victor perceive the anatomical workings of their patients/experiments – it rather comes across as a bit tired and desperate). Victor’s an obnoxious drunk, and generally much too annoying to be either charismatic or engaging, given to meta-comments like “I think it’s high time you met our monster” and correcting a Young Frankenstein pronunciation of his name that everyone probably thought was a hoot in rehearsals (likewise the Bride of-esque “They LIVE!” and Igor getting in a ”Yes, master”). Victor is haunted by the death of his brother, for which he feels responsible, and his father (Charles Dance; quids in there, Charles) blames him for it too, in that old chestnut.

Also on hand is the Andrew Scott (also present from McGuigan’s Sherlock cast is Louise Brealey) as Inspector Turpin, proving that, even without a sing-song cretin Oirish accent, he’s tremendously irritating. Turpin is fervently religious, so his clash with Victor is as subtle and nuanced as you might expect from Landis (“Are you a police officer or are you a theologian” quips Victor leadenly). The dialogue really is dreadful. At one point, Igor announces they will need lots more energy for their experiment, before stressing, “And I mean, tonnes more”.

The movie starts off over-stylised and undernourished and only becomes more so as it progresses, a noisy, choppy, paceless mess more akin to Stephen Sommers (but without the bat-shit craziness) than McGuigan’s usual range. The tale culminates in the usual monster-unleashed thing, underwhelmingly designed and initiating a really rather tiresome altercation in a (naturally) thunderstruck castle. About the only scene of any merit is a previous reanimation, as Victor and Igor bring life to a hideously stitched together chimpanzee, the demonstration unfolding atmospherically. At least, until they switch from a prosthetic to a CGI creature.

Still, this dud doesn’t seem to have done anyone any harm. McAvoy and Radcliffe continue unabated. Landis just took a huge payday for Netflix’s Bright (fortunately, it’s being rewritten. Unfortunately, by David Ayer). And McGuigan has made Eon’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, which has led to rumours of his saddling up for the next Bond gig. I’d have been all for the director of Push, Lucky Number Slevin and season one of Sherlock getting the job, but on the evidence of Victor Frankenstein, it would be tantamount to reemploying Lee Tamahori.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

We’ll bring it out on March 25 and we’ll call it… Christmas II!

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
(SPOILERS) Alexander Salkind (alongside son Ilya) inhabited not dissimilar territory to the more prolific Dino De Laurentis, in that his idea of manufacturing a huge blockbuster appeared to be throwing money at it while being stingy with, or failing to appreciate, talent where it counted. Failing to understand the essential ingredients for a quality movie, basically, something various Hollywood moguls of the ‘80s would inherit. Santa Claus: The Movie arrived in the wake of his previously colon-ed big hit, Superman: The Movie, the producer apparently operating under the delusion that flying effects and :The Movie in the title would induce audiences to part with their cash, as if they awarded Saint Nick a must-see superhero mantle. The only surprise was that his final cinematic effort, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, wasn’t similarly sold, but maybe he’d learned his lesson by then. Or maybe not, given the behind-camera talent he failed to secure.

When primal forces of nature tell you to do something, the prudent thing is not to quibble over details.

Field of Dreams (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s a near-Frank Darabont quality to Phil Alden Robinson producing such a beloved feature and then subsequently offering not all that much of note. But Darabont, at least, was in the same ballpark as The Shawshank Redemption with The Green Mile. Sneakers is good fun, The Sum of All Our Fears was a decent-sized success, but nothing since has come close to his sophomore directorial effort in terms of quality. You might put that down to the source material, WP Kinsella’s 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, but the captivating magical-realist balance hit by Field of Dreams is a deceptively difficult one to strike, and the biggest compliment you can play Robinson is that he makes it look easy.

On a long enough timeline, the survival of everyone drops to zero.

Fight Club (1999)
(SPOILERS) Still David Fincher’s peak picture, mostly by dint of Fight Club being the only one you can point to and convincingly argue that that the source material is up there with his visual and technical versatility. If Seven is a satisfying little serial-killer-with-a-twist story vastly improved by his involvement (just imagine it directed by Joel Schumacher… or watch 8mm), Fight Club invites him to utilise every trick in the book to tell the story of not-Tyler Durden, whom we encounter at a very peculiar time in his life.

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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