Victor Frankenstein

In some ways, Victor Frankenstein is a much better movie than I expected.  It looks absolutely gorgeous, there are some fun performances, and even some ideas that could have easily led to a strong movie.  But the confused screenplay by Max Landis (American Ultra) can't make up it's mind on what it wants to be.  It tries to reinvent the classic Mary Shelley story in so many different ways that it just can't seem to settle on a consistent tone.

The film's main revision is that it is told from the point of view of Igor, Frankenstein's assistant.  Yes, this is another one of those revisionist movies that tries to tell the story from a different character's point of view, such as last year's Maleficent.  While the idea does somewhat reek of studio desperation, the script does actually have a somewhat clever angle on this.  Igor (played here by Daniel Radcliffe, who is quite good, if not a bit subdued and proper for the kind of movie he's in) starts the movie off as an abused circus freak.  He is a hunchback frequently locked in a cage and disrespected by the entire circus company.  When he gets few precious moments by himself, he likes to study medical journals and the science of the human body.  He gets to use this knowledge when the lovely young performer Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay) suffers a possibly fatal fall during her trapeze act.  Thinking quickly, Igor is able to save her life.  This catches the eye of one of the spectators, a scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy, hamming it up to the point that we can sometimes see the spittle flying from his mouth) who happened to be visiting the circus looking for dead animal parts that he could use in a future experiment.

Seeing Igor's medical knowledge first hand convinces Victor that the abused and disfigured young man has greater potential than anyone could possibly realize, and sets about helping him escape from the circus.  This leads to the first of many overblown action sequences that not only feel out of place, but are shot so haphazardly by director Paul McGuigan that we sometimes can't discern what is supposed to be happening.  After this, the movie slows down once again, and follows the growing friendship between Victor and Igor.  They start things off by having Victor help Igor with that "hump" problem, providing him a back brace that will allow him to walk upright (after some painful injections to help remove the fluids from his back).  From there, Victor leans to trust Igor with his experiments, and shows him how he is attempting to create life from dead tissue.  Their first attempt is with a patched together chimpanzee, but when that goes wrong (in yet another overblown action sequence), they begin to question whether they could create a genuine, thinking man.

Victor Frankenstein wants to be a lot of things, but can never settle on one specific direction. It mostly wants to be a buddy movie that explores the relationship between Victor and Igor, and how their medical genius brings them together.  The relationship between them is actually not all that different than the one between Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law shared in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, with McAvoy's Frankenstein being a sharp-tongued, sarcastic and egotistical genius, and Igor being the more quiet and cautious of the two, who is easily exasperated at times by his friend's behavior.  Despite playing at two very different extremes (McAvoy being very over the top, and Radcliffe taking his part seriously), they do work well together, and there are some nice moments between them that hint at the kind of movie this was trying to be.  The problem is that every time the film feels like it's settling into a comfortable groove, it flies off the rails.

This is a movie that at times tries to be an intentionally campy comedy (there are references to Young Frankenstein and Comic-Con), an over the top action thriller, a love story (there's a subplot with Igor and the circus performer Lorelei growing closer that never really goes anywhere), and a story of friendship and acceptance.  All of these elements are clumsily inserted into the basic Frankenstein narrative, and don't fit with the overall story.  There are also two villains added, one being a police inspector (Andrew Scott) who thinks that Frankenstein's experiments are going against the laws of nature, and the other being an aristocratic fop (Bronson Webb) who agrees to fund our heroes' experiments, but may have treacherous motives of his own.  Neither of these characters are fleshed out enough to be interesting, which is kind of the film's central problem.  Whenever it turns its attention away from Frankenstein and Igor, the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with itself.  Characters either seem thinly written, or feel like they had larger parts, but had most of their scenes edited out in the final cut of the film.

And what of the Monster?  Well, it doesn't appear until the very end of the film, and is treated in such a way that it is essentially just a walking special effect, rather than an essential element to the story.  The Monster merely serves as the set up to the film's final over the top action scene that manages to go on too long while simultaneously underwhelming us with how uninspired it ends up being.  This is a movie constantly selling itself short.  Just when you think it knows what it's doing and is going to work, it drops the ball by throwing in a cliched action or chase scene that feels like it doesn't belong.  I obviously have not read the script to the film, so i don't know if this is how it was written, or if Studio Executives demanded more action in the script, and it was rewritten to shoehorn them in.

All that I can say is that while Victor Frankenstein doesn't quite work, it does have some very good moments within it, and you can easily see what the movie could have been with the right approach.  Even if the script itself is a bit of a mess, there are some absolutely lovely images and set designs to see here, especially if you like Victorian settings.  As the film started to play out, I was rooting for this movie to surprise me, and certain that I would end up enjoying it, despite the negative word of mouth.  It couldn't quite sustain that enthusiasm within me, but I don't completely regret watching it.

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