Frankenweenie (2012)

In 1984 Disney took a punt and gave one of their young animators, a skinny pale young-feller-milad named Tim Burton some money to make a live action short and recoiled, in horror, at what he wrought by tampering in God’s domain. It’s a truly terrifying film, and even looking at the poster has driven me quite mad. Oh yes!

It’s called”Frankenweenie” but he’s not a weenie dog he’s a bull terrier and no one ever mentions that am I MAD I MUST BE MAD HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously, it’s a rather charming if ludicrously cheap and cheerful little short about a boy named Victor Frankenstein who uses lightning to bring his beloved dog back to life. And Disney took one look at it and said “Dark? Weird? GOTHIC?! We never expected this of YOU, Tim Burton!” and fired his ass.

Fortunately, the short brought him to the attention of Paul “Pee-Wee” Reubens and Burton’s career was off to the races. Flashforward a few decades and Disney have finally realised that they quite like this Tim Burton character and he’s settled into a groove as one of the most reliable nipples from which they milk their never-ending stream of content. And what better way to mend fences than for Disney to pony up the money for a lavish, stop-motion, feature length do-over of Frankenweenie?

Do you need me to send you a picture of a weenie dog or are you assholes trolling me?

Now, I’m a pretty big Burton fan all things considered but his late period collaborations with Disney have been the absolute nadir of his career. But, can this return to his roots shoot a few volts into his long dead artistic drive?

So in one of those perfect, faintly menacing white picket fence 50s towns there lives a little boy named Victor Frankenstein. Victor is a quiet introverted boy with a real knack for science and a love of film-making and spends his days making home sci-fi movies starring his beloved dog, Sparky. Victor’s parents are a little worried that their son doesn’t seem to have any friends and is a little weird. Which is nonsense, because every child in this town is a goddamned freakshow and Victor is by far the most normal and well adjusted of all of them.

So how exactly do you space out a short little thing like Frankenweenie into a full length feature? Well, one option is to broaden the scope of the parody. If the original short was just the 1931 Frankenstein by way of Normal Rockwell, Frankenweenie 2012 is an homage to basically every horror movie Universal made in the mid-century with The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, the Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman all getting referenced . Plus a bit of kaijiu. Plus a bit of Village of the Damned of all things. Also some Hammer. Basically, if there’s an old-timey horror movie you can think of Tim Burton probably managed to sneak in a reference at some point. So Victor’s class has a new science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, who’s basically Nikolai Tesla as played by Vincent Prince as played by Martin Landrau.

This is not really pertinent to whether or not Frankenweenie is a good movie or not, but I want to say it anyway because teachers never get enough credit. Mr. Rzykruski is a fantastic teacher. This is not a joke, he genuinely is phenomenally good at his job. I would have his scenes taught in teacher training courses (although probably not the scene where he tells the kids’ parents that they all idiotic monkey people). He explains complex concepts using narrative and theatricality and his passion for the subject is positively crackling. If I had had this guy as my teacher in school, I probably wouldn’t have succumbed to the siren call of the arts.

So, Mr Rzykruski tells the kids that there’s going to be a science fair with a big shiny trophy going to the winner and all the children want to get their mitts on it. Victor is approached by a weird girl in his class who is literally called “Weird Girl” and she shows him a turd that her cat, Mr Whiskers, laid that morning in the shape of a V, and tells him that something big is going to happen to him soon. Good point right here to talk about the character designs.

They are, frankly, the fucking tops.

Victor asks his dad if he can do the science fair, and his dad says that he can as long as he also joins the baseball team. During the game, Victor hits the base ball with the base ball stick and Sparky chases after it and gets him but a car which, if my knowledge of baseball is as good as a I think it is, allows Victor to steal base.

Well, it’s sad his dog is dead. But at least he won baseball today.

Victor is heartbroken but, when Mr Rzykruski demonstrates how to make a dead frog dance using electricity and that gives Vitor an idea…

No, he’s just going to bring the dog back to life.

So after some grave robbing and a scene in the attic that rather marvellously recreates James Whale’s original Frankenstein, Victor succeeds in re-animating Sparky. Sparky seems more or less okay despite being stitched together by an eleven year old. He hides the dog when his mother comes up to ask him if he wants waffles or French toast and he chooses waffles because why stop with one abomination against nature?

So here’s where the story deviates from the original short in order to fill out that runtime. Sparky breaks out of the attic and gets into all kinds of shenanigans, including wrecking the garden of Mr Burgermeister, the mean neighbour who also happens to be the mayor of the town. Sparky is seen by Edgar E. Gore, a classmate of Victor’s who realises that Victor has been doing stuff.

Edgar Blackmails Victor into bringing back his deal goldfish which has a weird side effect of turning the fish invisible. Victor swears Edgar to secrecy. And, I mean, if a weird little hunchback boy desperate for the approval and attention of his peers can’t be trusted with a really cool secret who can be?

Real “I’ll steal my mother’s underwear for you if you’ll pretend to be my friend” vibes from this one.

Worried that they’re going to lose the Science Fair to an invisible fish, two students named Toshiaki and Bob shelve their Sea Monkeys and begin working on a rocket powered by soda (fun fact, the space race started exactly the same way). But Bob is injured when he’s launched off the roof and the town’s parents angrily demand that Mr. Ryzkruski is fired for bringing the menace of science to their fair town. Also, this scene has a weird line about Pluto not being considered a planet anymore. I mean, it’s not explicitly stated when this movie is set, but I do not get a “2006” vibe from this scene.

Look at these people. They know nothing of the Black Eyed Peas! They know aught of Nickelback!

Mr. Rzykruski takes to the stage and tries to explain to the parents that they’re just ignorant so he gets fired because there are different kinds of intelligence and having one doesn’t mean you have all the others.

Meanwhile, Edgar’s invisible fish has vanished. I mean, it’s gone. Not…you know what I mean. Victor asks Mr. Ryzkruski why the experiment didn’t work the second time and he tells Victor that science depends on what’s in the heart of the scientist and, no, I’m pretty sure he’s confusing science with the Care Bear Stare.

Honestly just putting this here to have a little colour in this review.

Edgar lets slip that it was actually Victor who made his fish invisible and that he’s brought Sparky to life. Intrigued, the other children try to resurrect their own dead pets with lightning. Nassor, who is designed to resemble Boris Karloff, resurrects his dead chinchilla Colossus, wrapped in mummy-like bandages. Bob creates Creature from the Black Lagoon-esque sea monkeys. Weird Girl’s dead bat gets fused with her cat creating a vampire kitty. Edgar makes a were-rat. And Toshiaki’s dead turtle gets transformed into a fifty foot Gamera.

Know what I find hilarious/vaguely offensive? Toshiaki almost certainly bought that turtle in America.

The lightning just somehow knew he was Japanese and made his pet a kajiu.

That is some racist lightning.

Meanwhile, Victor’s parents discover Sparky in the attic and freak out. The dog runs off but when they confront Victor he explains that he just really wanted his dog back and they’re okay with it. Apparently. Like, why else would he bring the dog back? Were you concerned he was building an army of zombie dogs to conquer the world. Because, yeah, in this town, probably a legitimate concern, forget I said anything.

They find Sparky in the graveyard and everyone’s cool but then the kids come running up to tell Victor that their creations are running amuck and attacking the town. The kids have to work together to defeat the monsters, and weirdly enough, it’s not the frickin’ kaijiu that turns out to be the biggest problem. Victor and Sparky get trapped in a burning windmill by Weird Girl’s vampiric cat. Sparky is killed saving Victor’s life from Mr Whiskers who is then brutally impaled. Which…damn. I really thought Mr Whiskers was going to be changed back. But no. He gets fucking got.

Guess Tim Burton’s a dog person.

Touched by Sparky’s heroism, the townspeople rally around and use their car batteries to restore Sparky to life

After Victor finds Sparky at the town’s pet cemetery, Bob and Toshiaki find him and ask for his help. They go to the fair, where the Sea-Monkeys explode after eating salted popcorn, Colossus is stepped on by Shelley, and the wererat and Shelley both return to their original, deceased forms after getting electrocuted. During the chaos, Persephone, Elsa’s pet poodle, is grabbed by Mr. Whiskers and carried to the town windmill, with Elsa and Victor giving pursuit. The townsfolk blame Sparky for Elsa’s disappearance and chase him to the windmill, which Elsa’s uncle accidentally ignites with his torch. Victor and Sparky enter the burning windmill and rescue Elsa and Persephone. However, Victor ends up being trapped inside. Sparky rescues Victor, only to be dragged back inside by Mr. Whiskers, who is fatally impaled by a flaming piece of wood just before the windmill collapses, killing Sparky again.

To reward him for his bravery, the townsfolk gather and revive Sparky with their car batteries. Persephone runs to Sparky and they touch noses, producing a spark.

***

Frankenweenie was one of those movies that came out, got a ton of critical love and then just vanished into the ether. Maybe it was the fact that 2012 was something of a banner year for 3D animated horror movies aimed at children, with Frankenweenie going up against ParaNorman and Hotel Transylvania. For the record, none of those three films are bad but ParaNorman probably has the edge in terms of animation and Hotel Transylvania is definitely a safer bet for the “Just keep my damn kids quiet for ninety goddamn minutes, please” demographic. And, while the decision to keep the movie entirely in Black and White was definitely the right one artistically, I can’t help but feel that might have hurt it at the box office.

Scoring

Animation: 19/20

Call it 19.5. At one point I had to stop and google that this movie wasn’t actually CGI because the stop motion is just so gorgeously fluid.

Leads: 10/20

Victor is a sympathetic enough lead (what am I going to say, “who cares about this small boy grieving the loss of his dead dog”) but he’s nothing special.

Villain: 13/20

Mayor Burgermeister seems like he’s being set up as the main antagonist but doesn’t really effect the story in any meaningful way. In the end, all he has going for him is a menacing, gravelly vocal performance by…holy shit, really? Martin Short? Well damn. Also, great design.

Supporting Characters: 16/20

It can come across as a Muppet Babies version of the Universal Horror monsters but these characters are a lot of fun.

Music: 07/20

Danny Elfman on complete autopilot here.

FINAL SCORE: 65%

NEXT UPDATE: 31 October 2023

NEXT TIME: You thought you were safe! You thought it was over! But it returns from the grave! Bat versus Bolts is back, and it’s here to fuck you in the gall bladder!