Homage. The word gets used a lot in filmmaking these days. Homage to this movie. Homage to that movie. In Igor, the latest animated comedy, the filmmakers pay a direct homage to one of the greatest moments in cinema history, the b&w horror classics.
In the country of Malaria, it constantly rains and thunderstorms. We were told that the country was once peaceful and beautiful, but now it's mainly presided over by mad scientists who compete for the same thing every year. They work on their greatest work, present it at a contest, and the winner's diabolical weapon gets used to threaten mankind. Pay a hefty ransom or mankind gets it. Every mad scientist has an igor. That's their names...all of them. One Igor in particular (voice of John Cusack), doesn't want to be the scientist's hunch-backed lackey his whole life. He'd rather invent. In fact, he has had two near successes. He has a brain, named Brain (voice of Sean Hayes), in a jar that talks. This brain isn't smart nor is it abby-normal. In fact, it's quite dumb (it wrote "Brian" on its jar). The second is a squirrel named Scampers (voice of Steve Buscemi) that can't ever die. Everytime something bad happens to it (i.e. something heavy landing on it), he just poofs! back to life. When Igor's master (voice of John Cleese) dies in another failed experiment, Igor decides to keep it hush-hush and take over his master's duties, creating something everyone in Malaria thought was impossible...creating life. When the leader of Malaria (voice of Jay Leno) and another mad scientist (voice of Eddie Izzard), who is the continual winner of each contest catch wind of this possibility, they each decide to get a look at it their own way. What Igor creates, however, is life, but not evil. Evelyn (voice of Molly Shannon), as she calls herself, is a gentle giant. After they run Evelyn through a brain-washing (kind of like a car wash), a major glitch has occured. The channel in the brain-washing room had been changed to an episode of In the Actor's Studio with James Lipton, so now Evelyn thinks she's an actress rehearsing for the main role in a stage production of Annie. Igor and his friends decide to go along with this, presenting her at the contest as his own creation.
This is an often funny, sometimes hilarious, and awfully adorable animated comedy. Despite the somewhat dingy premise and the pretty good CG, it pulls off nicely. There are plenty of nice homages to Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and even Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The voice cast does an incredible job and their timing is great. This is a film for both young and old alike, especially if you were a fan of the old, black and white horror classics.
3 stars
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