FRANKENWEENIE

New Holland. Young Victor Frankenstein is a lonely and intelligent boy, passionate about science and deeply attached to his little dog Sparky, practically his best friend. One day, Sparky is hit by a car and dies, and Victor falls into despair. Inspired by a lesson from his science teacher about electricity and the nervous system, the boy decides to try an experiment on his dog's corpse. He resurrects Sparky and, taking advantage of a storm, sets up a mechanism to channel the electricity of the lightning bolts into the inanimate body of his deceased pet. The experiment succeeds and Sparky comes back to life! Victor decides to keep him hidden until one day the animal goes for a secret walk around the neighborhood and is noticed by Edgar, a classmate of Victor's, who seizes the opportunity to blackmail his peer. 1984. A 26-year-old Tim Burton, a collaborator at Disney as an animator ("Red and Toby") and designer ("Taron and the Magic Pentole"), dreams of becoming a director and asks "Dad" Disney for help to bring home his first feature film, to be made in stop motion and in black and white. This is "Frankenweenie," the story of a boy and his dog and how their friendship went beyond the animal's death, since the boy manages to bring him back to life as Frankenstein did with his monstrous creature. However, the project does not go as it was conceived, and from a feature film "Dad" Disney provides the means to make only a short film, moreover live action and not in stop motion, a technique too complex and expensive. "Frankenweenie" thus lasts 29 minutes and has a cast of note that includes Shelley Duvall ("Shining"), Daniel Stern ("Home Alone") and Sophia Coppola... but it is not what the young Burton had in mind. Twenty-eight years pass and the dream of that boy who grew up on a diet of monsters becomes a reality, only that boy in the meantime has become one of the most influential directors in Hollywood and it was Disney itself that asked the author for a new collaboration, after the commercial success of "Alice in Wonderland" that brought them back together. "Frankenweenie" version 2012 is therefore exactly what Burton had in mind from the beginning, of course with the necessary adaptations to the new technologies that have improved its formal aspect, such as the use of modern 3D which in the opening is also intelligently contextualized in a logic of old-style B-movie. Everything starts, in fact, with a little film that Victor has shot with his dog Sparky and that pays homage to the Japanese monster cinema that from the 1950s onwards spread with great success. The image is blurry and Victor's voice reminds his mother that she must wear the little glasses if she wants to see well, since he shot the little film in 3D! From here starts a huge and affectionate homage to all fantastic cinema with which Burton grew up and that he has always shown in his previous works, from the classic Universal horrors to those of the Hammer, passing through Japanese science fiction and touching the cinema of the 1980s. "Frankenweenie" is indeed an emotional roller coaster that retraces horror in its happiest epochs, a learned philological operation that will not fail to captivate both adults and children. I say adults and children because, although it is a Disney-branded animated film and therefore full of good feelings that are absolutely pertinent and optimally managed in the narrative context, "Frankenweenie" is a film that is particularly aimed at an adult audience. Already the use of black and white, which serves to give a historical-temporal context (set in the 1960s, even if never explicitly stated) and citational to the film, seems an anomalous choice for a family product, then there is an entire use of images and expedients dear to horror cinema that without mincing words could frighten the youngest spectators. Then the game of references to past cinema is for exclusive use of genre enthusiasts with references to "Frankenstein" by James Whale and its sequel "The Bride of Frankenstein," "The Wolf Man," "The Mummy," "Gamera," "Dracula the Vampire" (whose images scroll on the television), "Gremlins" and the actor Vincent Price, very dear to the director, whose features are reproduced for the character of Professor Rzykruski, who in the original has the voice of Martin Landau, who in "Ed Wood" played Bela Lugosi. But "Frankenweenie" is not a carnival of citations for the use and consumption of the horror fan, it is a beautiful film in itself, rich in feeling and with a staging in some respects truly surprising. The characters are well written and optimally characterized, starting with Victor's classmates, among whom stands out Stranella, the thin girl with a wide-eyed look and a monotonous voice who walks around with her cat Mr. Whiskers, an animal with incredible predictive abilities. However, the story and characters are immersed in the typical poetry of Burton's cinema, cemetery and ultra-dark even if sympathetically devoted to arousing emotions, starting with the touching story of friendship between a child and his dog. Very good the 3D, usually useless in animated films because now standardized to a little functional use of depth, while in "Frankenweenie" it manages to provide support for some narrative choices that recall the use that was made of 3D in the old scary films. In short, an excellent performance for Tim Burton who, after a timid qualitative return with a "Dark Shadows" that still seemed too much at the service of Hollywood mainstream, returns with "Frankenweenie" to a very personal work and in tune with his great films of the 1990s. The best among the wave of horror cartoons we have seen in recent months. Votes rounded up.