I don't know that I've ever seen a Gothic comedy before, but this might be one. Based on corruptions of the titular horror character, this film is a sort of Frankenstein's monster itself, a hodgepodge mishmash of themes and tropes that, stitched together with simple and silly thread, skip off to a dark ruined castle to live happily never after. It's horror and comedy, science fiction and period drama, whipped up together with a frenzied cinematic approach not unlike film adaptations of graphic novels (I would compare its style to, for example,2003's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or even the 2009 Sherlock Holmes). It's got a strange sort of Grand Guignol flavor amidst its kinetic action and dramatic charm. And if that doesn't sound interesting to you, stop reading and go watch the holiday Hallmark specials.
I'm not saying the script is very good. It strikes a rather uncertain tonal chord, and wallows in the third act, when the Big Picture themes come to a rain-drenched, violent head. But the first half of the film is delightful, bouncing between the great talents of a surprising array of actors, including Charles Dance, Jessica Brown Findlay, and a deliciously wicked Andrew Scott as the religious police inspector hell-bent on stopping Frankenstein's sacrilegious experiments. But the real stars here are, well, the stars: James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe are miracle-workers here, reviving a flaccid script and generously supplying it with wit, charm, and no small amount of homoerotic undertones. If you had told me that Professor Xavier and Harry Potter would have mad chemistry, I would have laughed at you, but now I've seen the error of my ways.
The opening sequence is by far my favorite in the film. An aspiring romantic, nameless hunchback (Radcliffe) is slaving away in a London circus until the girl he loves (Findlay) falls during her aerial routine. He saves her with a doctor in the audience (McAvoy), who recognizes the hunchback's medical prowess and rescues him from the cruel circus. The sequence sets up the fevered pace of the film, its colorful and campy style, and the gritty nature of the violent material. Immediately after, the kindly doctor takes the hunchback to his home, names him Igor, and treats his physical plights by draining a cyst and fashioning a harness to right his posture. I found it hard to stop giggling between Radcliffe's frightened vulnerability, McAvoy's ferocity and speed (à la Rob Downey Jr.), the one-liners and action-genre camerawork, and the stylized animation that is meant to represent the medical diagrams through which these characters view their world.
Perhaps the reason I so liked the film is that, even when the script descends into sentiment and stupidity, the sheer spectacle of the performances and visual style remain intensely silly. That is to say, I could scarcely judge the stupid because I was so charmed by the silly. The film feels like it could be a mockery of the whole genre, a disturbed satire of the Frankenstein myth, or a sensational fever dream of artists who understand that spectacle, when handled intelligently, can supersede poor content.
IMDb: Victor Frankenstein
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