Rent Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Sloppy Version of Classic Gothic Story - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein review by GI

Director and star Kenneth Branagh has attempted to make a version of this famous gothic story as close to the novel as possible and get away from the Hollywood 'monster' image with bolts in the neck, high forehead etc etc. That's to be applauded yet despite a good start this is a clumsy film, poorly edited and with a hurried feel that makes it cheap and uninteresting. Characters dive through emotional swings so fast it's hard to keep up and Branagh seems obsessed with lots of shots of his sweaty torso and adds a pointless bodice ripping sex scene apparently so he can snog his co star, Helena Bonham Carter. Robert De Niro as the creature was no doubt a celebrated piece of casting but the resulting film leaves one wondering what attracted him to the role because the nuances of the character seem to be lost and it's difficult to interpret what we, the viewer, is meant to be feeling about him. Even the iconic scenes of the creatures birth are rapid and unfulfilling. Branagh has an eye for recreating the 18th century and some scenes are well constructed but the film doesn't flow at all well. The story is well known and here eager young intellectual Victor Frankenstein, the son of a renowned doctor (Ian Holm), is distraught by the death of his mother (Cherie Lunghi), and becomes obsessed with cheating death. At university he cobbles together huge amounts of equipment, steals body parts including the brain of his mentor (John Cleese) and stitches together a body which he manages to reanimate, immediately and I mean immediately, rejects it and flees. Then pretending none of this happened he pops off home to marry his beloved but of course said ungrateful and very ugly creature comes after him for some revenge. One is left with a big disappointment and the thought of what producer Francis Ford Coppola would have made of this story in the director's chair. What we have here is a mess I'm afraid