I've stated many times this year that my biggest complaint with kids' movies is that they rarely seem to make the effort to appeal to the poor adults as well. Kudos to Igor it at least seems to somewhat try. However it seems to be much more focused on being the next Nightmare Before Christmas. The key difference of course being that Nightmare Before Christmas is awesome, and Igor is just very mediocre.
Igor has a pretty decent idea going for it, however it's not an idea that translates well to a feature length movie. Things start out pretty interested and the movie displays a much darker tone than I expected. Then it doesn't take long for the thing to become some sort of bizarre romantic comedy and from that point on the film never fully recovers. Had it stayed with the tone it set up in the beginning, it could have made for a pretty decent film.
The voice acting is quite good, with John Cusack putting in a surprisingly lively performance. His normally monotone, yet awesome, delivery is replaced with a more upbeat tone that works well and he does a good job. Sean Hayes and Steve Buscemi seem like easy and safe choices for their roles, but there must be a reason for that since they do well. In fact I would Bushemi's character was my favourite in the movie.
There are a handful of decent one-liners here and there but the overall humour is frankly a little stale. It's the same fare that almost all animated movies hand out. The movie does work best when it's being edgy as some of the jokes that actually have some balls, are the ones that are actually kind of funny. The movie doesn't throw these out too often however and decides to pretty much just play it safe the whole time.
I think the filmmakers should have taken the idea and just went a lot further with it. I can understand that they probably didn't want the make the movie too dark since it's supposed to be aimed at kids, but these kids can handle a lot more than what most movies give them credit for. Some of the most popular kids movies of the past are quite dark, even some of the current ones like the Harry Potter or Narnia series contain a lot of more adult material. With a slightly darker tone this could have been a pleasant surprise. As is, it's just another in a long line of forgettable 2008 movies.
**/5
No comments:
Post a Comment