Igor (No Spoilers)

Posted on | 3 years, 4 months ago, mid-afternoon | 1 Comment

Igor has an awful lot going for it, for a movie that comes off so soft-boiled and bland. The villain and his villainess* are joyful little works of animation art, and the Burtonesque-steampunk setting was truly charming. Most of the voice acting is strong, and some is even superb.

But overall, the film is just plain feeble.

The writing was weak to the point of total absence, redeemed only sporadically by the immortal-yet-suicidal bunny (Steve Buscemi, who gets most of the good lines) and Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard, who gets all the rest of them). The titular character is voiced by John Cusack, which was both an odd choice and — in my humble opinion — a poor one. Two-thirds of That Which There Is To Love About Cusack is his physical delivery, and the remaining third is simply not enough to float an animated hunchback, I’m afraid.

But there’s lots to look at, and most of it is quite pretty. The kingdom of “Malaria” is goofily named but lovingly rendered, and I appreciated the pretense of giving the Steampunk World an honest excuse for existing (which I will not spoil here). All things considered, it was not the worst of all possible ways to spend 90 minutes — but with such an exceptional cast, and such a gorgeous “feel,” Igor really should’ve been much, much stronger.


* Inexplicably, this is the ONLY screenshot I can find of either of them.

Category: misc

Comments

One Response to “Igor (No Spoilers)”

  1. Aden
    September 22nd, 2008 @ 11:30 pm

    The art (and art direction) reminds me a lot of Tim Schaffer’s insane, insanely well-written PC game Psychonauts. Which I always wanted to see made into a film or television series.

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