Word: branagh
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...Branagh apparently spent more time pumping iron and tousseling his locks for the film than planning its direction. The film is almost destroyed by poor editing. Victor Frankenstein's comically bad dialogue with his monster and his fiancee is drawn out painfully. We can't bear to listen to gems like the monster's vow, "Frankenstein, I will have my revenge!" or Frankenstein's lament, "What have I done?" Yet the opening sequences, where his strange passion for dark science and his devotion to his family should be established, leave us with the dizzying sensation that we are watching...
Robert De Niro has the nasty task of undergoing 12 hours of makeup to become a monster who looks like a sloppily assembled Freddy Kruger, Branagh apparently can't sew, either. De Niro does make the monster into a sympathetic human-like character, but that character bears a striking resemblance to Robert De Niro with a lisp under several pounds of latex. John Cleese and Tom Hulce are welcome diversions from Branagh's well-oiled chest...
...years ago, Mary Shelley stayed awake all night writing a story "to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart." Her Frankenstein has kept generations of readers up in the nights since, but perhaps no group more than the film makers. Kenneth Branagh's new film, "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein", is yet another rebirth of the monster that has tested the pulse of our fears in versions ranging from animated cartoons to an X-rated Andy Warhol film...
...absorbed, unable to see beyond the experiment at hand. His monster is the product of an inevitable sequence of events: he believes reanimation is possible, and works maniacally until it is achieved. The Frankenstein films have been less successful than Shelley in defining his motive for creating inhuman life. Branagh chooses to make the death of Victor Frankenstein's mother the catalyst for his passion for dark science, necessitating a melodramatic graveside pledge that "no one need ever die again." Eraserhead goes in the opposite extreme, informing the unsuspecting Henry that a baby is expected, and that be can pick...
Whale's 1931 doctor is a likeable young man, carried away by the future glory of his efforts. He attempts, like Branagh, to be hostile to his family's overtures during the creation process; both relent in the face of the beloved's tender words. The earlier doctor seeks glory in a way that Branagh's does not, permitting an audience for the actual reanimation process to prove his sanity and prowess. None of the creators can summon the demented courage of Shelley's doctor to choose science over their human life. This is a reflection of the horror...