LFF Day 1 - Frankenweenie, Normal School

By Shaun Munro /

The UK's film smorgasbord-par-excellence, the BFI London Film Festival, kicked off tonight with all of the glitz and glamour you would expect of just such an event. The red carpet premiere of the fest's opening film, Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, stole the majority of the attention, owing to both Burton's statuesque status and the festival's characteristically slow first day. We've been camped out in Central London for the last two-and-a-bit weeks attending an un-Godly number of press screenings, so expect a frankly quite insane volume of coverage over the next 12 days, which really picks up tomorrow and doesn't let up until the finish line.

#1 - Frankenweenie

rating: 3.5

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Frankenweenie is the sort of film that a director gets to make once they've earned a studio billions of dollars; it is the payback film for years of good work - more commercially than critically these days - and while it concedes director Tim Burton's adoption of style as a creative crutch, this latest effort very much hearkens back to the hearty, workmanlike projects he is most revered for. Given Burton is essentially remaking his 1984 short film, this comes as no surprise, depicting the efforts of enthusiastic young scientist Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) to reanimate his dead dog, Sparky, who is killed in a car accident. Like Pixar's recent Toy Story films, there's a warm, affectionate tribute to the joy of play at the film's outset, as we observe one of Victor's own stop-motion home movies, in which a toy monster besieges a toy city, before Burton reveals the eerily serene suburbs in which they reside, previously infiltrated so immaculately in his Edward Scissorhands. This boy-and-his-dead-dog tale is an inherently sad concept, and while Burton admirably doesn't go the maudlin route, there's the nagging feeling that he could have done more to emphasise the pained loss of a pet that so many of us are familiar with. Still, it's an easy film to become enamoured with because while its dialogue-based gags are largely broad, it is positively brimming with visual wit. Burton's fans will have lots of fun keeping their eyes peeled for the litany of references to some of Burton's most abundant influences and collaborators; Victor's teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, bears a striking physical and aural resemblance to Vincent Price, while Christopher Lee cameos as Dracula on the Frankensteins' TV, and a neighbour's dog bears a post-electrocution hair-do not unlike the Bride of Frankenstein's. Similar to its timid emotional engagement, the narrative struggles slightly when digging into the finer points of its construction; the assertion that reanimating a deceased pet must be done with love feels a tad pat, though once again, the inspired flourishes - the morbid sense of humour, the clever shadow-play that transports us back to Plato's Allegory of the Cave - keep us from picking it apart too much. The bonkers third reel, Burton's love letter to the creature feature, is so expertly manic, unleashing the director's inner-Joe Dante above all else, that it certainly helps distract from any inherent flaws. However, it must be noted that the finale - featuring a miscreant being chased up a hill by an angry mob - feels lazily borrowed from several previous Burton films. Stop-motion has reached such a high degree of craft that watching Frankenweenie, we're left dumbstruck, wondering how it hasn't all been faux-rendered with CGI; the literally electric scene in which Victor brings Sparky back to life is an especially impressive set-piece. The character designs, while straight out of Burton's stock, are wonderful, especially Victor, Sparky and his odd array of wide-eyed classmates. Danny Elfman's score, meanwhile, is typically whimsical while incorporating giddy genre throwback elements. This is an unexpectedly sweet film that nevertheless subverts our sentimental assumptions, and it has the unmistakable feel of a gifted auteur very much back on terra firma. In many ways Frankenweenie is an apotheosis of Tim Burton's style, as well as a reminder of his strengths and weaknesses; it is emotionally neutered and keen to self-plagiarise, but beautifully formed and a lot of fun. Frankenweenie is on general release in the US and hits UK cinemas October 17th.