Kenneth Branagh's "I'm a God"

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. When I first heard about this film being made, I was ecstatic. I loved Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I was drooling at the prospect of a faithful movie adaptation of the classic monster novel. I became more excited when I found out who would be in the film, particularly the unusual choice of Robert DeNiro as the creature.

Then a funny thing happened on opening day. Despite the vast potential this film had, it somehow fell flat on its face.

Where do I start? Let's start at the beginning. The movie opens just like the book, by introducing Robert Walton, an explorer looking for a passage to the North Pole. Walton unfortunately is played by Aidan Quinn, an actor I find borderline talentless, and certainly grotesquely out of place in this movie. So we're already off to a rather poor start, aren't we?

Walton meets a wandering Victor Frankenstein, and it's at this point that Kenneth Branagh shows us how absurdly over the top this film will be and at the same time how much he adores himself by his introduction. "My name....is Victor..........................Frankenstein." Well at least I was able to make a trip to the restroom, wait in line for ten minutes to buy popcorn, and stumble back to my seat during that moronic dramatic pause. At this point I wondered to myself why they would cast William Shatner as Dr. Frankenstein.

The next thirty minutes are basically a montage of Victor's childhood up through adolescence. This segment is extremely rushed, and during the scene where Victor's mother dies in childbirth there's a lightning storm outside! As if the whole mom-dying thing isn't dramatic enough, there has to be a lightning storm going on at the same time. By the way, the music in this film is almost non-stop, and it's pretty terrible.

Victor's mentor at medical school is Dr. Waldman, played by John Cleese, in one of the film's few redeeming performances. Cleese actually seems to understand that subtlety is essential to believability.

Now we come to the monster's creation. Instead of shooting for realism and/or understatement like the novel does, Branagh decides to use electric eels to bring the creature to life. Yes, that's right folks. Apparently Victor went fishing and caught himself some electric friggin' eels! It's in this scene where Branagh demonstrates his incredible acting ability by constantly talking to himself. He of course has to use the famous line, "It's alive!" not once, but twice, to hammer home the cheese. Another favorite line in this scene is, "Tomorrow this journal must be destroyed.........forever." Well, wait a minute Vic. You might want to just temporarily destroy the journal in case you decide to reminisce in a few decades.

The next section is where the movie actually somewhat delivers. DeNiro gives a gentle and very sympathetic performance as the monster. And in the earlier scenes he hasn't even learned to speak yet. Unfortunately when he does learn to speak, the awful script doesn't provide him with much quality dialogue. In the book the monster has some beautiful and intelligent speeches about how badly he has been treated and how he wants to avenge himself upon Victor. In this movie though, his dialogue is dumbed down to the point where he only gets to recite a few good lines.

The cataclysmic scene in the book where Victor and the creature meet and talk to each other for the first time is almost totally botched in this movie too. In the book, Victor wanders the mountains, contemplating suicide because the monster he created has effectively killed two members of his family. The creature follows him into the mountains and confronts him in a hut. In this shameful exercise in melodrama that Kenneth Branagh chooses to call a movie, the creature somehow finds Victor's house and tells Victor to meet him in the mountains the next day, and they talk inside a cave of ice. Sure, that's believable. By the way, every time the monster appears unexpectedly there's an obligatory flash of lightning. Every time. Lot of lightning storms in Geneva, huh? Even when it's not raining, for God's sake!

The last act of this movie is something of a mess too. I guess the last act of the book wasn't sensationalistic enough for Branagh's taste. He had to change it somewhat to make it more shocking. I won't go into it, in case you do decide to rent this overwrought calamity.

There are some positive things about this film though. As I said, DeNiro's performance is very strong, despite how banal they made his lines. Helena Bonham Carter is also very good as Victor's love interest Elizabeth. John Cleese, Ian Holm, and Tom Hulce all turn in competent performances as well.

So it seems the brunt of the blame for this film tripping over its own feet before it can even get moving lies on Kenneth Branagh's shoulders. His obsession with frenetic shots of people running toward the camera screaming overwhelmed his judgment and common sense, I guess. He's so in love himself that he couldn't effectively play the role of Victor Frankenstein. He's too busy playing director/actor/God.