Igor - Fear My Evil Abomination!! Er... and her bunch of flowers???
Written: Oct 23 '08 (Updated Oct 23 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good characters, often funny, quirky style...
Cons: Slow start, a bit predictable...
The Bottom Line: It won't appeal to everyone, but I really enjoyed Igor. For those with slightly twisted minds, perhaps!!
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| captaind's Full Review: Igor |
Igor is a very enjoyable animated movie spoofing the horror genre, in particular the Frankenstein legend. It starts out with a rather ill-advised voiceover (let's face it, about 80-90% of all voiceovers are ill-advised!), but after a less than impressive introductory sequence, it becomes funny and creative, and crucially has some memorable characters to help it along.
The basic premise is that in the land of Malaria, things were all hunky-dory until some storm clouds came which wiped out the agricultural industry, and the king proclaimed that the only way to survive was to specialise in the niche market of building evil abominations, and the rest of the world would pay them not to unleash these wicked creations. Thus Malaria became home to many evil scientists, who all hope to win the prestigious Evil Science Fair. Each Evil Scientist has to have an assistant, of course, and naturally these assistants are all called Igor (though I never realised before that they had to graduate from Igor School!). One particular Igor, however, has ideas above his profession (if you can call being constantly abused and being asked to pull switches a profession) and wants to design evil abominations of his own, and win the Evil Science Fair. When a fatal accident befalls his current employer, Igor gets to thinking... and though no-one will take an Igor seriously, he believes that by achieving something no other evil scientist has ever managed before - creating life - he will be able to win over the people and get them to see past the hump on his back accept him.
His ambitions seem to be going very well, but it turns out that his evil abomination, his creation of pure wickedness and malice, is actually... well, rather a nice girl, really.
Though the basic plot is fairly predictable and the "you don't have to be evil and step on people to get what you want out of life" message is slightly too prominent in the movie (not that I'm arguing with the message itself!), there is plenty to like about Igor. At several points in the movie there are moments of creativeness in terms of plot elements and particularly visual design that are pleasingly surprising. The visuals and animation, while not up with the best of them in the animated movie world, provide a convincingly dark and quirky world that suits the movie very well, and the characters are good. Igor himself is a likeable character and of a sort we don't see all that often - basically good, but trying desperately to be evil! The relationship between Igor and Eva (it was meant to be Evil something but she decided she liked Eva instead) is actually quite sweet, partly I suppose because it's obviously not based on looks at all. Eva is the abomination who not only turns out to be quite nice but also very well-spoken, by the way.
There are quite a few memorable evil scientists, a shape-shifting girlfriend, and the king himself is oddly memorable. However Igor's earliest (and secret) inventions, Brian (well it's a brain in a jar with a couple of moving attachments, but not all that bright and not a very good speller) and Scamper, an immortal bunny with a death wish. Though Brian does have some funny moments in the second half of the film, it's really Scamper who makes the film - he's so cynical and grouchy that he was funny in every scene he appeared in, even if he did very little in that scene. Without Brian and Scamper this would have been a decent enough little film, but their addition definitely went a long way to making it so enjoyable.
The music score (Patrick Doyle) has some very traditional ooh scary music which is good in itself, but there are some terrific and very unpredictable journeys into jazz/blues territory as well, which all helps to build the slightly unreal, quirky atmosphere. A terrific voice cast have been assembled for Igor, including such veterans and Eddie Izzard and John Cleese, as well as other well-known names like Jay Leno, Myleene Klass a,d Jennifer Coolidge. I didn't feel that anyone was disappointing in the voice acting department. Brian was voiced by Sean Hayes while Igor and Eva were voiced by John Cusack and Molly Shannon respectively. The plaudits have to go for Steve Buscemi though as Scamper - absolutely brilliant (though I may be biased as I'm already a Steve Buscemi fan) and very, very funny.
This is only Anthony Leondis' second film at the directorial helm, and on the basis of this, he's going to be one to look out for in the future. Writer Chris McKenna also looks like a talent who may just take the world by storm.
Overall, after a slightly slow start, Igor is a thoroughly enjoyable animated movie and though perhaps more enjoyable for adults, kids will find plenty to like about it as well.
Rated PG for some thematic elements, scary images, action and mild language.
Other spoof animated movies:
Space Chimps (spoofed sci-fi movies)
Kung-Fu Panda (spoofed martial arts movies)
Another movie to spoof the Frankenstein legend is Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, in which Marty Feldman's Igor was hilarious.
The inspiration for these spoofs is Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which is an excellent book.
See also my:
Top Ten Spoof Movies
Top Ten Animated Movies
Top Ten Computer-Animated Movies
This review is an entry to my Good Movies Write Off 2
Recommended:
Yes
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