Frankenweenie

The story of Frankenweenie’s conception is a complicated one; years and years ago, a young upstart named Tim Burton was hired by Disney as an animator. However, when he turned in his short movie about a young boy who brings his dog back from the grave, Disney felt it was WAY too dark and scary, and promptly fired him. Skip forward to today, and Burton is one of the most financially viable directors in Hollywood, and Disney have welcomed him back with open arms to direct the feature-length version of his story. However, it recently flopped on its opening weekend in the US, and while Disney probably won’t be firing him again, they certainly won’t be inviting him back for a sequel.

A black-and-white, stop-motion animated movie about re-animating the corpses of deceased pets was always going to be a tough sell, but Burton doesn’t try to sugar coat it. This movie is inherently weird, with that same oddness that Burton brought to Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, with the story focusing on Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) and his dog/best and only friend "Sparky", who one day gets run over by a car and a heartbroken Victor decides to bring him back to life. But local weirdo "Edgar E. Gore" (geddit?) finds out about it, and forces Victor to re-animate other deceased pets too...

Not as funny as Hotel Transylvania or as scary as ParaNorman, Frankenweenie is still arguably a better movie than both. It is laced with fantastic movie references, and has a brilliant (if not exactly A-List) cast, with the likes of Catherine O Hara, Martin Short, Winona Ryder and Martin Landau all providing voices for some very interesting characters.

At its heart, despite all of the weird visuals and the kooky story, this is a movie about a boy and his dog. It’s cute and something almost everyone can relate to, but unfortunately with the brash and/or colourful likes of Hotel Transylvania and ParaNorman also on the market, it’s difficult to imagine any child wilfully picking Frankenweenie over its competition. This movie seems to be aimed at 8 year old movie nerds, and as Victor Frankenstein will tell you, there aren’t too many of those out there.