{"id":11930,"date":"2009-03-08T11:37:24","date_gmt":"2009-03-08T18:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/03\/08\/11930.html"},"modified":"2009-03-08T11:37:24","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T18:37:24","slug":"review-igor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/03\/08\/review-igor\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Igor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few months back, I saw previews for an animated movie called Igor<\/a><\/cite>. It looked like fun: the premise was that in a land of mad scientists, all with assistants named Igor, one Igor wants to invent stuff of his own. And I liked the visual style, too. But the movie largely disappeared from theatres in less than a month, and I missed it.<\/p>\n

Last night, Kam and I were looking for something light and fluffy to watch; we stopped by the video store (first time I've been in a video store in months), and spent a while browsing, and then I looked at my Netflix queue and saw that Igor<\/cite> was on it. Kam had never heard of it, but liked the description.<\/p>\n

So we picked up a couple of movies we'd both seen and enjoyed before as backups (Galaxy Quest<\/cite> and Groundhog Day<\/cite>), and rented Igor<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a lot of fun. John Cusack in the lead role, though playing and sounding like essentially the generic animated-kids'-movie-male-hero part. (Is it just me, or do all the young male leads of animated kids' movies sound pretty much identical lately?) John Cleese in a minor part as a mad scientist. Eddie Izzard as the evil Dr. Schadenfreude. Jay Leno in a relatively minor part as King Malbert. Christian Slater in a very minor part (only a few lines) as Dr. Schadenfreude's Igor. Arsenio Hall in a relatively minor part as a TV interviewer. SNL alum Molly Shannon in a major part as a monster named Eva.<\/p>\n

And, stealing every scene he's in, Steve Buscemi as Scamper, an immortal rabbit with a death wish. I generally hate comic sidekicks, and I'm not generally a Buscemi fan, and I wouldn't have expected to enjoy quasi-suicide jokes on that particular day, but this particular character and running gag were the funniest things in a pretty funny movie.<\/p>\n

We laughed and laughed. Some of the jokes are in fairly poor taste, but even some of those were funny. If you like the mad-science aspects of Girl Genius<\/cite>, if you like Tim Burtony animated movies, if you like Frankenstein<\/cite>, if you like Annie<\/cite> but don't take it too seriously, if you enjoy smart animated kids' movies--at the very least take a look at a trailer<\/a> and see if this movie looks like your cup of tea.<\/p>\n

I wish I'd seen it a few weeks ago so I could've put it on my Hugo nomination ballot.<\/p>\n

Not brilliant, but a lot of fun, especially if you're in the right mood for it.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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