Like a Frankenstein monster, the movie Igor"" seems to be thrown together at the last minute, borrowing spare parts from clichéd horror movies and held together with weak stitches of original story.
The story takes place in the dark and stormy town of Malaria, where the dream job is to be an evil scientist and the worst job is to be an evil scientist's assistant, positions filled by hunchbacks named Igor. One Igor (voiced by John Cusack) dreams of being a scientist himself, much to the displeasure of the evil science community. But when his evil scientist master accidentally blows himself up, Igor seizes his chance by entering his latest invention - a Frankenstein-esque monster who is more interested in starting her acting career than being an evil monster (voiced by Molly
Shannon) - into the annual Evil Science Fair.
The movie shows promise with the monster-genre twist of Igor being more intelligent than the scientist, but the film can't quite get over stereotypes. The design for the town of Malaria and its animated characters are a pale imitation of Tim Burton's ""The Nightmare Before Christmas."" Where Burton excelled with his dark, grimy sets and unique puppet animation, ""Igor""
falls short with its obvious computer animation, that looks flat and overdone, failing to recreate the sinister atmosphere of Halloweentown. The King of Malaria and the monster that Igor creates are obvious references to the ""The Nightmare Before Christmas"" characters the Mayor and Sally, and though this form of computer animation is more updated than Burton's puppets, it is not nearly as well done.
The movie holds one promise, the character Scamper (voiced by Steve Buscemi), a depressed rabbit that tries to repeatedly kill himself but can't because Igor made him immortal. The character of Scamper was probably created to make the movie appear more morbid, but though Scamper is highly entertaining for adult audiences, he has the potential to make parents uncomfortable with their children watching his constant suicide attempts.
Paired with Scamper is Brain (voiced by Sean Hayes), who is nothing more than a brain in a jar on wheel, but the twist is Brain is extremely stupid. When paired with the extremely intelligent Scamper, this duo becomes the most entertaining aspect of the film. It is a shame they are merely secondary characters designed to always be in the background of Igor's story (like Timon and Pumbaa in ""The Lion King"") because they are really what makes the movie flow.
Overall, ""Igor"" had the potential for some great ideas but was sloppily executed. The script appeared to be hastily written and offered nothing more than already done ideas and corny lines, which is such a waste for a stellar voice cast. It is not surprising that Disney would try to recreate the vision of ""The Nightmare Before Christmas"" for this upcoming generation, but they should have just stuck with the original because even with all the lightning storms in Malaria, this movie failed to come to life.
Grade: C
