In a recent interview while doing the press junket rounds for his latest stop motion movie Frankenweenie, Tim Burton said something very telling, but very true “the movies I make that everyone says they love never make much money, and the movies I make that everyone says they hate are always the biggest hits.” While that’s a slight exaggeration, it’s not one by much. I have a feeling Frankenweenie is going to be one of those films that everyone who sees it will love, and yet a large number of moviegoers will ignore it. Certainly early estimates make Frankenweenie a box office disappointment already, despite mostly great reviews. Meanwhile, the two Burton movies that almost everyone I’ve met says they hate (Alice in Wonderland, Planet of the Apes) are two of his most financially successful movies. Alice is the twelfth most successful movie worldwide of all time, hard as it may be to believe. It seems Burton’s best movies are never appreciated fully when they’re released. And while Frankenweenie isn’t the very best Tim Burton movie (there are at least five that are superior) it certainly stands proudly next to them.
It hasn’t been easy admitting to being a Tim Burton fan for the past decade or more. But for the first fifteen or so years of his career, Burton churned out true classics on a regular basis. We take Burton for granted now, but there was a time when almost everything he directed was pretty amazing, and totally unlike anything else the Hollywood studios were producing. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, the Batman films, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas*, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks and Sleepy Hollow are all movies ranging from good (the latter two) to great (everything else) Certainly Tim Burton isn’t the first director to show how behind the the facade of all-American suburbia, there’s a darker, more twisted and just plain weirder side; that’s been the forte of the likes of directors John Waters and David Lynch for years. But people like Lynch and Waters have always worked on the fringe, barely ever touching mainstream success. Tim Burton on the other hand has taken his own similar outsider sensibilities and signature visual style and spun them into box office gold over and over again. He brought quirkiness to the mainstream in a way almost no director ever has.
And then, came the apes. The 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes was one of the worst pairings of director and material I’d ever seen, and Burton never seemed to really get his groove back after that. He made some truly good movies since then (Big Fish and Sweeney Todd for example) but for the most part, everything else he’s done this past decade has been missing a certain something. It didn’t help that all his output this past decade has been remakes or movies based on some form of previous material. A lot of people have been wondering if we’d ever see a truly classic Tim Burton movie ever again, that perfect mix of the Gothic and macabre with the whimsical and the heartfelt. I’m happy to say Frankenweenie is that movie.
Frankenweenie isn’t the best Tim Burton film by a long shot, (that honor belongs to the two Edwards, Wood and Scissorhands) but it is easily the best movie he’s made in at least a decade, and maybe the purest Tim Burton movie he’s made since Edward Scissorhands over twenty years ago. And it is also maybe his most autobiographical film ever. Both Burton and young Victor Frankenstein grew up in 1950’s cookie cutter suburbia, both were kids who were were a little more obsessed with monster movies than seemingly everyone else, and both had dogs they loved and lost. On top of all that, both had that one special teacher who recognized their oddball genius before anyone else did. Maybe it’s because Frankenweenie is so personal to Burton that it’s so good. Unlike so many of his recent works, like this past summer’s Dark Shadows, this time it felt like he really cared. This time he showed up for more than just a fat paycheck.
This isn’t the first time Burton has told the story of a bull terrier who comes back from the grave. His first film was a live action short by the same name, produced by Disney back in 1984. Deemed too dark for the kiddies, it was shelved until the DVD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas in the 90’s. I always loved Burton’s original live action short of Frankenweenie, but I’ll admit when I first heard he was going to extend it to full length status I dismissed it outright. I just figured Burton had run out of original ideas and now had to extend an old short that was perfectly fine the way it was. I couldn’t be more happy to be wrong. because the feature length version of Frankenweenie is an instant classic.
Frankenweenie has the same basic structure as the original short film; Victor Frankenstein is reclusive elementary school student who doesn’t have any friends except his loyal dog Sparky. When Sparky is accidentally killed when hit by a car, Victor brings his back as only someone with the last name Frankenstein can. But the new film adds a ton of new memorable characters that weren’t in the original short, like science teacher Mr. Rzykruski, voiced by Martin Landau, as well as all the other children in Victor’s school who were totally absent from the original film. All of these elements make this movie feel not like a stretched out short story like I feared, but make the original look like a rough blue print for a superior movie instead. While the original short was an obvious homage to Universal’s classic version of Frankenstein, this new version is an homage to almost all the classic Universal horror films from the 30’s and 40’s, not to mention random other things like Godzilla and even Gremlins. Another welcome added element to the story is a very pro-Science angle, which I wasn’t expecting. With willful ignorance and anti science attitudes being embraced by Americans at alarming levels, I’m glad someone is speaking out against all this institutionalized stupidity.
Another reason to love Frankenweenie is that Burton chose to not just lean on actors Johnny Deep and Helena Bonham Carter for the zillionth time, and instead chose to utilize actors he’s worked with before, but hasn’t worked with in a long time. Catherine O’Hara, who worked with Burton on Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas plays not only Victor’s mom, but also “Weird Girl” a classmate of Victor’s who thinks her cat Mr. Whiskers can predict the future in an unusual way (I won’t spoil it here because it’s just too awesome) Winona Ryder, who got her start starring in Burton films like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands plays Elsa Van Helsing, the Frankenstein’s neighbor,sorta channeling her character from Beetlejuice, only in claymation form. Martin Short (who starred in Mars Attacks!) plays multiple parts as well, as Victor’s father and the awful mayor of the town Mr. Begermeister, and finally Victor’s Boris Karloff like rival for the science fair prize. And Burton even found a way to sneak in yet another Christopher Lee cameo, this time in a rather inventive way. I should also mention that Danny Elfman’s score is the best score he’s done in years; he didn’t phone this one in like so much of his recent output.
I honestly don’t really have any bad things to say about Frankenweenie. If you have an affection for the Tim Burton films of yore, chances are you’ll love this movie. If you love old classic horror films, you’ll probably love it just as much. (I find it hilarious that the two best “horror” flicks of 2012 so far have been stop motion family movies, Frankenweenie and the recently released Paranorman) Part of me wishes Tim Burton would retire and let Frankenweenie be his swan song, and end his career on a high note, but that’s not likely to happen. But who knows? Maybe this signals a return to form for Burton, and we’ll get more original projects from him and less rehashes of other people’s material. Certainly his illustrated poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy has enough oddball characters from his brain to make another potential classic. In the meantime, you should support Frankenweenie this Halloween season, and help spread the word to everyone on this classic to be. At the very least, see this instead of Hotel Transylvania.
*Yes, I’m aware that The Nightmare Before Christmas is directed by Henry Selick and not Tim Burton. But Burton came up with the concept, the characters, and his name is even in the title;The official title is Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. So sue me, I’m counting it as a Burton film.