Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie is a cute animated homage to the old fascination with bringing the dead back to life.  Shot in black and white 3D stop motion animation (that’s a mouthful!), its sweet, charming and very funny.

Tim Burton cleverly brings together a set of amazing voice talents to bring his childhood story to life.  We meet young Victor Frankenstein and his best friend, little dog Sparky, in their adventures around New Holland.  Sparky is the star in all Victor’s homemade horror movies, plays baseball and goes everywhere with him.  They inseparable.  When a terrible car accident takes poor Sparky’s life, Victor is inconsolable.

Until he gets a crazy idea in science class to bring Sparky back to life in classic Frankenstein style.  And as horror stories go, things don’t always go to plan with hilarious consequences.

It’s not a kids story for me, if anything this was made for adults.  I was roaring with laughter throughout especially Weird Girl, skilfully voiced by the excellent Catherine O’Hara, bringing a psychic element to the story.  Her premonitions are so funny and all said with a dead pan, one note voice. Equally weird is her cat’s involvement in the premonitions.

Reunited together again with O’Hara is Winona Ryder as the awkward female interest in Elsa Van Helsing.  Her character is no different to the awkward odd teenager with heart in Beetlejuice and I had wished she would have done something a bit different.  Martin Short is great as Mr Frankenstein, the soft spoken and soft hearted father to Victor.

The film is different and you may only like it if you are a Burton or Horror fan, but I laughed so much at points, my cheeks were hurting.  It’s a brilliant, heart warming take on the relationship with a boy and his best friend and I loved it.