Reviewed by Richard Lee Zuras

Released: 9/19/08
1 hr. 27 min.
PG 
Tony Leondis / MGM

John Cusack
Steve Buscemi
Eddie Izzard
Sean Hayes
Molly Shannon

It isn’t that Igor is a complete failure, but it is as if Igor were a sequel to a far superior part one. The director of Igor, in fact, is Anthony Leondis, a man whose career writing/animation credits include several inferior sequels including The Emperor’s New Groove 2, The Lion King 2, and Lilo & Stitch 2.

But it is the copycat, cliched nature of Chris McKenna’s (American Dad!) Screenplay that dooms Igor to this fate. A hunchback named Igor (in this film, all hunches are named Igor) attempts to create a Frankenstein’s monster, which really irks the evil science community. Eventually, “Eva,” the monster Igor created, wins the “evil contest” only to be turned kind again by Igor.Mercilessly, the cliches don’t end there. Somehow the producers have mistaken copying for post-modernism. Whereas the Pixar films take great pains to integrate–sometimes humorously, sometimes poignantly–elements of cinematic history (witness Toy Story 2 and Woody as he “drunkenly” swings open the toy-box flaps and announces “I’m the sheriff in this town”), Igor is incapable of such seamless exchanges.

Igor, at its animated core, is trying extremely hard to be Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Many of the characters in Igor are drawn in imitation of Burton’s world, but come off closer to Willy Wonka’s Violet Beauregarde after the three-course gum or stick-like,  A Bug’s Life caterpillars in Victorian stage costumes. Burton’s world was indeed vivid, astonishing, and fifteen years junior in animation technology. Igor is, by contrast, a bland mix of 2D, 3D animatics, and CG that occasionally resembles a 1940’s Disney cartoon.

The voice acting is also sketchy at times, though fans of Eddie Izzard won’t be disappointed. In fact, it is his characterization of the aptly named Dr. Schadenfreude that almost saves the movie. He even seems to be drawn better. The problem is that even as Izzard is working hard to lift this movie, we are assaulted with copycat references to films like A Clockwork Orange and Sunset Boulevard–all of which might be better suited to American Dad! Or Family Guy.

The film, at scarcely 80 plus minutes, is laggard at times. Perhaps that is to be expected from a film whose script gives us lines such as “Everyone has an evil bone in their body–but we choose whether to use it.” Or “There’s an Igor entering the killoseum. Don’t worry, he’ll be dead soon.” Not to mention the closing musical number “I Can See Clearly Now” sung by a dozen blind orphans. Ouch.

Bottom Line: 2.0/5.0