September 26th, 2008
Here is a pic of what this movie is really trying to portray. I half expected to see this scene in the movie.
By Steve
I recently had the honor of representing dancinghotdogs.com at a film screening for the new animated film IGOR. This was my first screening so I did my best to pretend I knew what to expect. The screening room was smaller than I expected with only about 30 plush, but non reclining seats. I was, by far, the youngest adult in the group of six or so adults attending the screening. There wasn’t much interaction with anyone except an old lady who leaned over to give me this pearl of wisdom – ” Cartoons are never over 90 minutes”. She was correct it was only 87 minutes, but I didn’t friggin ask. It makes me wonder how some of these “critics” can accurately represent a cartoon 50 years removed from their childhood.
Ok enough ranting. I was there pretty early so I decided to take a look at the printed production notes about the film.
This film actually has a great idea for a setting. In the land of Malaria, the number one occupation is Evil Scientist. Of course, with every good evil scientist there must be a guy with a hump behind the scenes. The main story line here is that one particular IGOR who is voiced by John Cusack thinks he has the brains to become an Evil scientist on his own.
While the background of this movie-has a lot of potential; I find the storyline to be pretty generic:
Character not happy with his station in life. Check.
A larger than life enemy. Check
Character struggles against adversity to meet a crazy goal. Check.
Things don’t go to plan and it somehow turns into a love story. Check.
The animation itself was interesting. It appeared to be a cross between A Bugs Life and A Nightmare Before Christmas. It has all the perfect characteristics to keep kids glues to the screen- shiny objects and fast moving colors.
There is one character in this film that seemed to redeem some of the story line. This character is a rabbit, voiced by Steve Buschemi, who has been made immortal through Igor’s experiments. The kicker here is that he is suicidal and is constantly trying to off himself (unsuccessfully). Have fun explaining that one to the kids. There were also a few sexual references thrown in that were obvious enough to me to raise an eyebrow.
Bottom Line
I always root for any flick that has some thing to do with John Cusack, but this one is just “meh”. If I had kids it would be a different story. All of the kids in the screening room were actually going gaga over this movie. The bottom line is, if you are under sixteen, go see this movie. If you aren’t, wait for the DVD.
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