Review | FRANKENWEENIE

Back in 1984, there was a man by the name of Tim Burton, who created a short about a boy resurrecting his dog (think the classic Frankenstein story). Although the short film wasn’t mainstream, it became a cult classic.  Now, in 2012, enter the Tim Burton and Disney collaboration and the resurrection of FRANKENWEENIE. This newly resurrected version of the short is a 3-D, black and white, stop-motion animation feature film.

Let me just preface this review by saying that I am a HUGE Tim Burton fan, I love all of his movies, especially the stop-animation films. The Nightmare Before Christmas, Bettlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride and so on, are all so uniquely Burton and   FRANKENWEENIE doesn’t disappoint.

The minute the movie started I was hooked. The black and white lent to the classic feel of the story, and the music, as always was delightfully creepy as only Danny Elfman can do 🙂  The story, as you may have guessed by the title, is about a boy, Victor Frankenstein and his dog Sparky. The way they portrayed the love between the two and the animations of Sparky, were very true to life. Your heart definitely felt for Victor when the tragedy happens, I know I gasped when that scene happened. Don’t worry, there are no gory scenes at all.

Children will definitely love this film, although younger children might find some of the creatures a bit scary. My youngest is 8, and he hasn’t stopped talking about the movie since we got home! I think that some kids may even relate to Victor, who is somewhat of a loner, and whose parents try to make him “get out there” and play sports to socialize him more.

I loved all the characters, especially Sparky, but I also love Weird Girl and Mr. Whiskers. They just stole some of the scenes, and now I want a plush animal of Mr. Whiskers, LOL. I would have loved more of Elsa Van Helsing, she is a great character, and voiced by Winnona Ryder, who has been in several Burton films, so it was nice to “see” her in this one. Some of the best fun is trying to figure out who the characters voices are.

**The voice cast includes four actors who worked with Burton on previous films: Winona Ryder (“Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands”), Catherine O’Hara (“Beetlejuice,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas”), Martin Short (“Mars Attacks!”) and Martin Landau (“Ed Wood,” Sleepy Hollow”).

What my husband and I both absolutely loved about the movie was all of the classic monster references, even down to each of the characters being a classic “character.” It was so fun figuring out the characters and the subtle clues throughout the movie that seemed to pay homage to classic monster movies.

The nature of the movie is dark, but something we can all relate to, losing someone we love and wanting them back. The movie definitely captures the emotion and the love between a person and their pet, and again, it being in black and white only made it better and more emotionally charged, in my opinion.

Overall, we absolutely loved this movie, and enjoyed visiting with Mr. Burton’s quirky characters again. He definitely has a style of his own, one that I will forever be a fan of.

Website: disney.com/frankenweenie

Facebook: facebook.com/Frankenweenie

Twitter: twitter.com/DisneyPictures

Rating:  PG

U.S. Release date:   October 5, 2012

Running time:  87 minutes

Voice Cast:  Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Robert Capron, Conchata Ferrell and Winona Ryder

Director:   Tim Burton

Disclosure: I was provided with the above images by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and movie tickets from Allied Integrated Marketing to facilitate this review.