Sunday, January 26, 2014

I, Frankenstein

(Spoiler Alert! - sorry, I had too many rants not to have a couple of spoilers in this one)
You may be wondering why I even bothered going to this. 
Right now I'm wondering the same thing.
I usually don't put much stock in what the critics say about a movie, I just go to see it myself, then make a judgment.  While I am not really a Shelly fan in general, I have seen various inventions of this tale in film version, and I was curious about this one.  As much as I hate to admit it, this time the critics were right.  Should the trailer have given me a clue?  Yeah.  But, call me a glutton for punishment, I thought it'd be fun to see a reinventing of the tale. 
Except that it wasn't a reinventing.  It was an epilogue . . . a very long epilogue . . . a very dumb epilogue.
The premise is that Frankenstein's monster is immortal and has been rescued by this group of gargoyles who are the guardians of humans against demons.  Yeah . . . fun.  I thought it might be like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in terms of an interesting twist.  It wasn't.  Even with Miranda Otto and Bill Nighy, it was a slow movie.  There were several times that I wondered how much longer it would be.  I also thought that if I saw another shot of the monster's boots stomping, I would leave.  There were several fun action sequences, but the ending flew by and the middle dragged - not to mention that my two favorite characters died in the middle.  The CG gargoyles were okay, but when you finally see Miranda Otto's character become a gargoyle, it was an inferior version than the rest.  Bill Nighy makes a good villain, but he could only do so much with a bad script.  Eckhart really tried to put a new spin on the monster (rechristened "Adam") but one the shift from swift, flexible killing machine in one scene to stomping brute the next was a bit crazy.
Overall, if you want to have a laugh with friends, see it in a dollar theater.  Otherwise, just don't bother.

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