FRANKENWEENIE Blu-ray Review
Frankenweenie has arrived on Blu-ray and DVD Combo pack from Walt Disney Home Entertainment. Directed by Tim Burton with the voices of Charlie Tahan (Charlie St. Cloud), Winona Ryder, Atticus Schaffer (The Middle), Catherine O'Hara (Where The Wild Things Are), Martin Short (The Santa Clause 3), Martin Landau (Ed Wood), and Robert Capron. Whenever you watch a Tim Burton movie, you can be sure to experience a unique universe full of interesting characters with dark and creepy tones. Frankenweenie has plenty of that Burton style, and the Blu-ray has a bunch of extra footage that will keep you entertained for hours after the film ends.
John August penned the story that follows Victor Frankenstein (Tahan), a lonely boy whose only friend is his dog Sparky. Victor's parents Edward and Susan (Short and O'Hara) sign their son up for the baseball team in an effort to gain him some friends. Sparky chases a ball that Victor hits out of the park, and gets hit by a car and killed. Inspired by his eerie new science teacher (Landau), Victor decides to bring Sparky back to life with the help of some lightning. Things look to be going great, but Victor's classmate Edgar Gore (Shaffer) forces him to tell him how he was able to reanimate his dog. As you can imagine, this causes lots of crazy things to happen. You will have to watch the movie to find out how things go down.
I would have to say that Frankenweenie is one you should skip, if it were not for the special features on the disc. I was hoping for a lot more from this movie, but was horribly let down. Disney could have left this movie on the shelf as far as I am concerned. The major flaw is that the story was stretched longer than it should have been. Frankenweenie should have stayed a short, instead of being turned into a feature film. The stop-motion animation is fantastic, so it is too bad the story is lacking.
The voice work was also lacking, Landau and Schaffer being the best of the bunch, Landau has such a wonderful presence in live-action movies as a result of his voice, so his work on Frankenweenie is superb. I was pleasantly surprised with Schaffer, his character on The Middle is not my favorite, but he did a solid job of portraying an Igor-like character. The special features are the only saving grace for this movie.
The features include:
- Miniatures in Motion: Bringing Frankenweenie to Life: This short featurette packs a major punch, It covers everything you could ever want to know about stop-motion animation and the varioius models and puppets that go into the making of the movie. Burton and the producers and crew also discuss the expanded story and scripts as well.
- Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit: Go behind the scenes of the interactive art show for the film with a look at the sketches, production photographs, models, interactive exhibits and more that went into making the movie.
- Original Live-Action Frankenweenie Short: If you have not seen the 1984 short, here is your chance. The short features Barret Oliver (The NeverEnding Story's Bastian), Shelley Duvall, and Daniel Stern. I like this a lot better than the feature film actually.
- Captain Sparky vs. The Flying Saucers: This is a bonus animated short with Victor, Sparky and a homemade stop-motion short-film-within-a-film.
- Music Video: The Plain White T's perform "Pet Sematary."
- Trailers & Sneak Peeks: Oz: The Great and Powerful, Wreck-It Ralph, The Muppet Movie: The Nearly 35th Anniversary Edition, Peter Pan, Peter Pan: Return to Never Land, Planes and Once Upon a Time.
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