Frankenweenie (2012) Review

There was once a point where Tim Burton was considered a genius. His surreal Gothic style combined with his ability to visually tell his stories made many films such as Edward Scissorhands and his interpretation of Batman landmarks in cinema. However, in recent years, he's been losing his storytelling abilities and instead resorted to just showing off his style, even pushing the envelope with his style a few times. Many have called out Frankenweenie, the recent 3D stop-motion animation flick released under his name, to be a return of form for him. Sadly, I felt that this was just another load for the scrap pile.

Based off of a 1984 short under the same name, the movie follows Victor Frankenstein, a kid who lives with his parents and his dog, Sparky. His school's science fair is just around the corner, and he tries to get his parents to sign a permission slip for him to enter. However, his dad persuades him to push aside science and take up baseball. Through chasing after a home run Victor hits, Sparky ends up getting run over by a car and dies. However, Victor takes on the Frankenstein routine and brings his dog back to life by electrifying him. Once word of this gets out, many of the other kids in the neighborhood attempt to bring their pets back to life as well.

I'll start off by saying I did enjoy the first twenty minutes or so of this movie. Victor and Sparky have excellent chemistry together, and you can feel Victor's loneliness when Sparky is gone. I also like how the whole abstract, stand-alone kid plot point is established. A movie like Paranorman would usually try to make the protagonist surreal, but this movie makes Victor the only normal kid in his class, whereas all the other kids are surreal. I also like the suitably creepy animation style, even though it goes overboard to a point where it seems less like a Tim Burton film and more like satire of Tim Burton films.

However, once you get past the point where Victor brings the dog back to life.... Nothing really happens. Victor goes to school, Sparky ends up escaping the attic and starts roaming through the neighborhood, and the whole movie just turns into a montage of random events that have no relevance or meaning. The movie literally has no purpose of existence other than to show off cutesy images, and I really don't like it when a movie treats kids like that's all they ever want to see.

However, the biggest killer for me has to be the ending. I'll have to put up a SPOILER WARNING for this....

Through a pretty dull and forgettable climax, Sparky rescues the neighbor girl from a fire in a windmill, but fails to survive the building crashing down himself. Victor pulls him out of the ashes and hugs him once more. He's convinced that he's supposed to stay dead, and it seems like he finally has an understanding of the meaning of life and death. This seems like the end of a very well-made character arc. Then, the movie throws in one of the worst lines anyone could possibly throw into this situation; "Sometimes, grown-ups don't know what they're talking about." YEAH, CRAM THAT INTO YOUR KIDS' HEADS! So, the neighborhood gathers together a whole bunch of cars, hooks up a few jumper cables, and attempts to bring some electricity back into Sparky. They succeed, and the movie ends on a shot of Sparky's nose touching the nose of the neighbor dog.

Frankenweenie is just another example of why Tim Burton's not working out at this point. There's style, but there's no substance. The animation is well-made in its suitably creepy style, but the movie as a whole feels padded. It feels like the movie is having a hard time deciding on what it wants to do. The fact that this is the most appreciation Tim Burton's gotten in years just doesn't add up for me.

This movie is worth $3.