Monday, August 12, 2013

Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012) Review

Yes, I am alive. I always love being on holiday...especially when you forget to leave a message on your website and it winds up being empty for a week. Well anyway, I'm back and still continuing on with catching up on films I missed from 2012. At least I've now seen all the films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Film. Does Frankenweenie deserve the nomination? Let's find out.

Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is a young boy whose best friend is his pet dog Sparky. When Sparky is hit by a car, Victor hatches a plan to reanimate him and bring him back from the dead. When the other kids in his class learn about this, they wish to replicate this on other animals in order to in the science award. Things don't go to plan as the kids have to team up with Victor in order to save the town from reanimated monsters. 

While the film does scream Tim Burton, it pays much more homages to his older days rather than what you might expect from him now. No Johnny Depp, no Helena Bonham-Carter...and I'm glad. Burton goes back to using actors such as Cathrine O'Hara and Martin Landau and it reminds me of when Tim Burton made much better films than now (Ed Wood, Beetlejuice, Batman and so on). This leads me onto the voice acting which is good for the most part. While actors like Martin Landau and Martin Short do a good job but certain actors I can easily distance them from the character which...is not a good thing.

It is a pretty creative and imaginative film that delivers some great references to classic horror movies (characters based on Vincent Price and Boris Karloff for example). If you love classic horror movies, I think you will enjoy this film. The whole film is also in black and white which adds to the effect which is definitely a strong point of the film. I guess I'm glad that people got to see this as not many people saw the original short film Tim Burton made.

Frankenweenie is a pretty decent animated flick. It gets a bit too ridiculous towards the third act but it's good entertainment for kids yet still manages to retain that dark Tim Burton feeling. If you like older Tim Burton films or classic horror films, you will probably enjoy this but otherwise, this might not be for you. Rise of the Guardians was a much better candidate for Best Animated Film....Wreck-It Ralph should've still won though (yes, I'm still bitter about it)

Verdict:
7/10
A creative animated flick that does a good job of referencing classic films but other than that, there isn't much to it.

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