Tim Burton's first film does not quite do the same job as A Taste for Love (2008) in terms of encapsulating the themes of the original work. Of course, the latter takes place in the context of an R rated film and the former as a Disney short film, which my account for most of that.
Anyway. Young Victor Frankenstein;s beloved dog is run over by a car. Then because Victor is precocious, like all good children's film protagonists, and he loves the mutt, he raises the dog from the dead. The villagers hate the dog mostly because it is ugly; it causes mischief not even rising to the level of hinjinx, let alone murdering a little girl like the original monster. The dog saves Victor's life but dies again in the process. Finally, the villagers rally around this unholy abomination for his heroics and all pitch in to revive the dog a second time.
The lesson of that is, obviously, 1) don't be ugly and 2) if you insist upon being ugly, save a child's life.
In one brief scene Victor's parents very nearly arrive at the question of the morality of playing God but never quite get there. Then again, the entire Disney empire is built upon the notion that you can take powerful, primal storytelling (Grimm's and Han Christian Anderson's fairy tales, Kipling, et cetera) and translate that into something palatable for a mass audience, often retaining a large degree of artisitc merit in the process. In other words, it is an inevitable and entitely acceptable whitewash.
OVERALL: ***/5 but be warned that this short film is complete and utter fluff, as per the Tim Burton oeuvre.
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2 comments:
Chrystal loves Frankenweenie...wait...that sounds dirty.
Pauly, we all know that your penis is cobbled together from the penises of various corpses.
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