Frankenweenie

Year of release : 2012

Run time : 1h27m

Genre : Animation / Horror

Voices : Winona Ryder

The black and white gothic stop-motion animated science fiction horror is a remake of Tim Burton's 1984 short movie of the same name, which was a parody and homage to the 1931 Frankenstein movie, based on Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein book.

Young boy Victor Frankenstein is a little genius, who makes movies, and spends his time with his dog, Sparky, as he doesn't have any friends.

Victor's father is concerned that he doesn't have any friends, and tells him he can play baseball. Victor accepts the challenge, and out at a game, his dog breaks lose, and runs into the street after the ball, being ran over by a car.

Crushed by this, he decides to revive him, as his science project their science teacher gave them at school. Luckily for him, their town, New Holland, has storms almost every night, people getting struck by lightning pretty often.

He digs up the dog, patches him back together, and on a stormy night, he ..brings him back.

He keeps him inside the attic, but the dog escapes, as always, and strolls through town. One of his weird colleagues sees him, and blackmails Victor, into bringing something to life for him, as his science project.

Victor does, and the kid, unable to keep a secret or his mouth shut, tells their other classmates, who break into his house, and steal his ideas, wanting to bring their pets back to life.

The animation looked good, but the plot inspired by other movies, some including some Tim Burton's movies (see the mill catching fire, I think that's inspired by Sleepy Hollow) gave me deja-vu and didn't get me that involved in the story.

Most of the characters were annoying, like the classmates who all seemed villains, the mayor, and most of the grownups who were supposed to be of a backward mentality.

I don't know who this animation was for, maybe for the anime lovers, as the movie is dark, and the characters scary looking(if I had a kid I wouldn't let them watch it). Most of them look like zombies (dead), to the point I was wondering if they were supposed to be dead, when the movie started (and they were kids!).

It really bothered me how they made it look so easy to bring something back to life, to the point they all brought back to life their pets, just by connecting them to a wire struck by lightning!

I liked the visual effects, the style of the animation, which is very laborious.

The soundtrack, by Danny Elfman, was good.

The animation received positive reviews for the visuals, and grossed 81,5 million dollars against a budget of 39 million. It was even nominated for a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Animation, among many other award nominations.

CinemaScore audiences gave the movie a B+ on an A+ to F scale.

Rating : Worth a watch !