FRANKENWEENIE (Three and a Half Stars)

U.S.: Tim Burton, 2012

Two of the best things horror-comedy podigy Tim Burton ever did were a couple of black and white cartoons he made for Disney back in the early ‘80s, when he was a lad in his 20s. One of them, Vincent (1982), was the tale in rhyme of a little boy who adored Vincent Price. Narrated in his inimitable evil-ish sneer by Mr. Price himself; it was a critical hit, and deserved to be. (I remember seeing it in a theater in the early ‘80s, with mingled bemusement and delight — and filing away Burton‘s name in my noggin.) The other gem, the black and white featurette Frankenweenie, was a Frankenstein parody set in a black-and-white sit-commy stop-motion suburb, about a child named Victor Frankenstein who revives with electricity his dead pet dog. This one apparently dribbled into some theaters, offended some parents and/or Disney executives, was shelved and maybe got Burton fired..

Success, not to mention electricity, is the best revenge, especially for  an artist who still retains the heart of a dark little boy and his dead little dog in a puppet graveyard on a dark and stormy night. Nearly 30 years after the first Frankenweenie’s ignoble mistreatment, Burton –who has long since gone back to Disney in triumph as a superstar director, commanding huge budgets (Alice In Wonderland, Sweeney Todd) and mucho respect — now has remade Frankenweenie in black and white, stop motion and 3D, and expanded it to feature length, which is what he always wanted.

If you spend nearly 30 years, on and mostly off, on something, you’ve got plenty of time to iron out all the kinks — though, actually, kinks are what we usually expect and want from Burton. This new show has plenty. The first Frankenweenie (which came out on home video after its shelving) was good. This second is good as well, and longer and crazier and more exciting — and kinkier.

Like all the best Burtons, it takes us back to our second or third childhood.  It has a little boy named “E.“ Gore (Atticus Shaffer), a cat that turns into a monster-bat, crazed sea-monkeys, Winona Ryder in a reprise of the strange anti-social girl she played for Burton in Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, and a turtle named Shelley who turns into Godzilla. It has Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short as Victor’s parents, who don’t want him to seem weird, antisocial or unsportsy (at least, Short doesn’t), or to spend so much time in an unpromising activity like making and showing movies in the attic.

It even has Martin Landau doing a Vincent Price imitation, seasoned with a little Bela Lugosi, as the school’s mad (or at least angry)  science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski. It was the untamable, unconquerable, unpronounceable Rzykruski who inspired young Victor F. (voiced by Charlie Tahan) to his feats of dead-dog-revival on the corpse of his beloved terrier Sparky, voiced (or barked) by Frank Welker.

The movie begins Spielbergishly, with Victor showing an amateur movie upstairs in which Sparky stars. He’s a delightfully glum, ‘shroomy-looking little chap, a tyke all in monochrome, and Sparky is a bouncy, happy, irrepressible little doggie who has a yen for the poodle next door. Sparky is also Victor‘s best friend, indubitably. But  unfortunately one day, he interrupts a school baseball game (part of Mr. Frankenstein‘s normalization regimen), to run and fetch a home run ball across the street, and returns right in the path of one of those onrushing cars that keep popping up in movies these days.

Sparky is buried on a high black and white hill, under a gray stony cross, and Victor’s heart seems broken,  until Mr. Rzykruski demonstrates in class that dead frogs can twitch with a little jolt of electricity. What about lots of electricity? What about lightning and kites and a spooky graveyard at night? Will it work? It’s working! IT‘S ALIVE!!!!

That’s pretty much the story the old Frankenweenie told, very well. The new Frankenweenie adds a lot, including lots of allusions to James Whale’s almost Universally admired  horror classics (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein) and the long lost Frankenstein, Where Art Thou?) (just kidding), and  some sinister schoolmates of Victor‘s (“E.” Gore’s pals) who discover his Sparky secret. Scheming to snatch victory from Frankenstein in the school’s science fair, they come up with their own electric jolts, engendering  the oddball gallery above, and more, all of whom then run amok in the town. It’s a familiar tale, but done with just the right dark little touch. In this case, lightning does strike twice — and at the right running time.

The fun of Frankenweenie — the fun of all the best Burtons, from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to Alice in Wonderland — is the way he mixes the macabre and the whimsical, layers chocolate childlike playfulness with cheese-and-wine adult sophistication. The cute little black-and-white children here, even when they connive wickedly or talk like Peter Lorre, are the kind of cinematic toy-creatures that  dance in your dreams, take root in your imagination. They’re grand little puppets, grandly embarked on a Whale of a voyage. And Frankenweenie, in both its versions, is Burton to the core. Vincent Price would have adored it. Or at least he would have liked — and maybe even been able to spell — Rzykruski.

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