Franken­wee­nie

In 1984 a promis­ing young Dis­ney ani­ma­tor was giv­en the chop for wast­ing the studio’s mon­ey on mak­ing a live-action short deemed too fright­en­ing for young view­ers. Almost 30 years lat­er Tim Bur­ton has res­ur­rect­ed the project that almost end­ed his career, adapt­ing his orig­i­nal Franken­wee­nie – which still exists in its entire­ty on YouTube – into a fea­ture-length stop motion mono­chrome gem that might just be his best film of the last two decades.

Franken­wee­nie tells the sto­ry of Vic­tor Franken­stein (voiced by Char­lie Tahan), who lives in the leafy sub­urb of New Hol­land with his folks and trusty pet dog Sparky. One day tragedy strikes and Sparky winds up chas­ing the big mail truck in the sky, but Vic­tor isn’t pre­pared to let go and with a lit­tle sci­en­tif­ic know-how and healthy dose of homage to Mary Shel­ley, he mirac­u­lous­ly brings his beloved pooch back to life. The rean­i­ma­tion scene itself is won­der­ful­ly com­posed – a light­ning storm in a makeshift attic oper­at­ing the­atre. For a short while every­thing is fine, but when Vic­tor lets his secret slip to his school chums he inad­ver­tent­ly sets in motion a chain of mon­strous events.

Repur­pos­ing the high-con­trast Americana/​Victoriana aes­thet­ic from Corpse Bride, Burton’s debut full-length stop-motion fea­ture from 2005, as well as 1993’s The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, and fea­tur­ing voice work from Winona Ryder, Cather­ine O’Hara and Christo­pher Lee and a creepy Dan­ny Elf­man score, Franken­wee­nie is vin­tage Bur­ton. And yet for all that the dis­tinct flavour of the director’s work comes from his long-stand­ing affin­i­ty for tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­telling, Franken­wee­nie feels anti­quat­ed rather than sim­ply old-fashioned.

Cred­it to Bur­ton for offer­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, not men­tion deeply per­son­al, but this joy-filled, lov­ing­ly-craft­ed boy-and-his-dog yarn belongs to anoth­er time. You’ll laugh, be spooked, have your heart warmed and ulti­mate­ly be left sad­dened by the thought that, had it been released 20 years ago, Franken­wee­nie might have been an ani­ma­tion classic.