Reclusive but artistically gifted, young Burton was famously given an opportunity to make a couple of shorts for the then wayward company during some of its strangest and darkest years. After the animated Vincent, Burton made his first short feature Frankenweenie – a 1960s “monster kid” checklist of B-horror film homage, boring suburban ennui, Edward Gorey and Charles Addams dark humor, all combined with Burton’s own twee worldview informed by 1980s goth culture and the cinematic twin totems of John Hughes and Steven Spielberg. Burton’s angsty, gloomy subject matter tapped into a subculture which would eventually be watered down by The Vampire Diaries, emo bands, and the later career choices of Johnny Depp. But before all that, came a junior mad scientist re-animating his deceased pet.
Perhaps as a result of no longer working with his longtime collaborator Henry Selick, Burton scales back the whimsical flourishes and emotional heft so dear to Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline – there are really no musical interludes (Winona Ryder’s mercifully-brief warbling is none too tuneful) and the human characters are simply rendered as Burton’s favored archetypes – hollow-eyed, gaunt children or exaggeratedly overweight suburban drones like he has always vilified. Comforting voice talent is provided by evergreen players like Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and Tom Kenny.
There was obviously plenty of room for improvement on the slight original story of the family dog getting fatally hit by a car just as re-animation of a dead frog is being conveniently taught in a basic elementary school science class. In the new movie, the science teacher (voiced by Martin Landau in thick Lugosi tones) is a towering ghoul with an existential European approach that encourages young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) to new heights of promethean experiments in his parent’s attic. One afternoon, Sparky is struck down while chasing a ball; though momentarily bereft, Victor knows that he has the means to bring his best friend back amongst the living. Sparky, of course, does come back into our hero’s life, but with a low battery that must be constantly charged; a few stitches and bolts complete the look without dwelling too much on the inherently creepy fact that the dog is basically a zombie.
A scene from Frankenweenie. Photo by Disney – © 2012 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comedy is mined from Victor’s attempts to keep his resurrected pooch from the adults and his morbidly curious classmates – like the hunchbacked Edgar Gore – until things go awry and a monstrous menagerie of botched attempts to re-animate other neighborhood pets leads to an action-packed finale which maybe spoils the modest beginnings so key to the story’s charm but is a great riff on Destroy All Monsters for the Disney set.
Frankenweenie will be best appreciated by anyone who still cherishes old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines, thinks Halloween is by far the best holiday, or is looking for a family film that is a little less pushy than most recent fare. Kids who go more for the Ice Age or Shrek movies and their loud, colorful humor may find Frankenweenie a bit too somber to hold their interest while the grownups will chuckle in recognition at the clever referential grab bag and little else. Stop-motion animation techniques have improved in the past twenty years and much more can be done with Sparky beyond having a dog with bolts affixed to his neck, but what the film makes up for in improved effects it lacks in creating rounder characters or a more resonant story. With some judicious editing, Frankenweenie would be perfect as a thirty minute short.
Gregory Fichter
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