By Todd Garbarini
Frankenweenie (2012) is an animated big-screen expansion
of Tim Burton's own 1984 live-action short film of the same name and utilizes
the Frankenstein monster tale by Mary Shelley to tell a clever and ultimately
moving story about a young boy, Victor Frankenstein, and how he copes with the
loss of his beloved dog. This is a
universal scenario that every child who grows up with a pet must face at some
point. I have only seen a handful of
films tackle this subject, and Don Coscarelli’s 1975 outing Kenny and Company is notable for its
depiction of a young boy who must take his dog to the vet to be put to
sleep.
Victor loves making 16mm movies with
his dog, Sparky, in his hometown of New Holland, which is constructed to look
like Everytown, USA. Sparky stars as the
“Sparkysaurus.†After all, what young
boy doesn't love dinosaurs? Mixing
footage of Sparky with self-made animation, Victor's movie illustrates an
imagination no doubt inspired by The
Twilight Zone and The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms (1953). Victor,
obviously an alter-ego for director Burton, is an awkward child who keeps a low
profile from his classmates and his neighbor Mr. Burgermeister (a nice nod to
Rankin and Bass) who brandishes a hedge clipper. During a baseball game, Victor hits a home
run, but Sparky chases the ball into the street and is killed by a car. Devastated, Victor mopes through school until
his science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, a grotesque caricature of a man, shows the
class how to use electricity to move a dead frog’s legs. Experiencing a “Eureka!†moment, Victor is
filled with a new sense of purpose, and converts his parent’s attic into a
makeshift laboratory. Following his
teacher’s instructions, he reanimates Sparky with the help of lightning.
Victor does his best to keep Sparky’s reemergence
a secret. A creepy, overzealous kid from
the neighborhood, Edgar, wants to know how Victor did it. Word gets out about Sparky, and other children
competing for a science project attempt similar experiments until things get
out of control: a rat becomes a crazed monster; a turtle is made enormous and
stomps among a town square carnival like a mixture of Godzilla and Gamera; sea monkeys
run amok through the streets; a cute, next-door poodle who fancies Sparky is
made to resemble Elsa Lanchester. (There are some cute inside jokes here: the
name "Shelley" appears on a tombstone and Bambi is displayed on a local theatre marquee, perhaps as much a
nod to the classic short film Bambi Meets
Godzilla as it is an homage to the Disney film.) The climax is a loving homage to James Whale’s
1931 classic that started it all and fueled nightmares for years to come.
Thematically, Frankenweenie shares many similarities to Henry Selick's 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas (produced
by Burton) in that a protagonist compelled to do a good deed ends up making a
mess of things. Most of the characters,
particularly the children, have predominantly large eyes, as if they stepped
out of a Margaret Keane painting (it’s no wonder that she is the subject of the
director’s next film, due for release later this year).
Filmed on Canon EOS 5D Mark II single
lens reflux cameras and printed in black and white, Frankenweenie looks lovely and is easily one of the year’s best
films. It should win the Oscar for Best
Animated Feature. It would be nice to
see black and white return to the screen as an art form as it truly looks beautiful. Danny Elfman provides yet another memorable
score to a Tim Burton film.
There are a few nice extras included on the Blu-ray disc:
- · We get a short film starring Sparky called Captain Sparky vs. the Flying Saucers,
the in-movie that appears at the start of the film and runs roughly two and a-half-minutes in
length (no relation to Siskel and Ebert’s Sparky the Wonder Dog of PBS’s Sneak Previews from the early 1980s.).
- · Miniatures in Motion: Bringing
Frankenweenie to Life is
an excellent behind-the-scenes documentary featurette that runs about 23 minutes
(I wish it was longer) and takes us to the massive 60,000 foot soundstage in London
where the film was shot and contains comments from the many animators who
worked on the individual scenes – they all averaged about two minutes per week
of screen time! What is truly
extraordinary about this piece is seeing the astonishing level of detail and
attention that is made to even the smallest of items. You get a new appreciation of the film and all
the hard work that went into making it. Absolutely nothing in this movie has
been computer-generated. It was all designed, built, and manufactured for the
film.
- · The Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit is enough to make one jealous if you
don’t live in one of the cities that it comes to.
- · Tim
Burton's original 1984 featurette, Frankenweenie,
upon which this film is based. This wonderful live-action film was financed by
Disney and the producers were reportedly shocked at how frightening it would be
for children, so much so that they fired Burton and shelved the project. It runs 30 minutes and stars Barret Oliver (The Neverending Story) as Victor, the
young son of Ben and Susan (Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall). Sofia Coppola, inexplicably using the name
Domino, appears as a friend of Victor’s.
It would have been nice to have a
running commentary with Tim Burton or from the animators as I love commentaries
and eagerly listen to them whenever they appear as extras. However, this is a minor quibble. The film looks absolutely amazing on Blu-ray
and is a worthy addition to your collection.
Click here to order order 4 disc deluxe edition with DVD and digital copies included.