Just been to watch Frankenweenie, Tim Burton’s latest animation, and really enjoyed it.  In fact would happily watch it again (and probably again!)

Frankenweenie is apparently an extended version of an earlier film by Burton and I’m so pleased he revisited it.  It’s shot in black and white and unsurprisingly tells the story of Victor!  But, in this version, Victor is a school boy, mad on science and his only friend is his dog Sparky.  Unfortunately Sparky meets an untimely death and Victor, besides himself with grief, falls upon the idea of trying to reanimate his best friend.

I loved the way this was shot in black and white.  It’s well lit and and atmospheric.  Victor and his parents live in surburia – a surburbia that looks much like that in Edward Scissorhands.  He goes to school and has a bunch of creepy looking fellow students.  A young girl with a cat that dreams about the future, a hunchback boy called Edgar and best of all a science teacher (called Mr Rzykruski) – who is the spitting image of Vincent Price and has the voice of Martin Landau.

What I really liked about this was the way that, whilst this is a family film and children will enjoy the animation, there’s plenty for parents to enjoy.  It’s almost like a pastiche of horror movies ranging from Gremlins to Godzilla.  There’s just so much going on here and it’s worth watching just to see if you can spot the many references.  But that’s not the only reason to watch.  I think Burton has, for me, had a couple of films recently that I didn’t enjoy as much but with Frankenweenie I felt like he’d really hit the mark once more and it’s such a treat when he puts a film like this together.

I absolutely love The Nightmare Before Christmas and never tire of watching it.  I don’t necessarily think this film will take over that spot but it’ll be sat quite high up on the list.

Frankenweenie

Image taken from IMDB