The Monster Cartoon Trifecta

            Over the last year there seemed to be a decent amount of movies made that had to deal with traditional “monsters” (and I’m not talking about sparkly Twilight vampires).  Three of the higher profile releases were part of our monster movie marathon at my house this weekend, as Goose had a great week at school and he is a sucker for all things monster-related.

Thursday:  Para-Norman

            The animation here was incredible.  The stop-motion/claymation-esque feel to it transported me back to my youth when that was more commonplace.  The character designs were just realistic enough to be recognizable as people but sufficiently over the top so that they were obviously cartoons.  The character designs for the zombies were some of the best I have seen, incorporating an uneasy humor with the ability to terrify at the same time.  The fully realized environment was a perfect setting for what went on, providing just enough support to the characters and the plot without being too intrusive. 

            My main gripe here is with the story.  I understood the story just fine, but it was very dull.  There were a couple funny moments, but most of those were what we were shown in the previews.  The majority of the movie does not even feature the zombies, and when it does it only has the seven that were of great importance to moving the plot along.  From watching the various TV spots, I was led to believe that this would be a little more of a monster movie and a little less of a tug at your heartstrings kind of thing. 

            The story itself is so very predictable as well.  Even something that you would expect to gloss over (the fact that the book that Norman has to read is just a bedtime story to put the witch back to sleep at night) is something that I picked up on right away.  I realize that this is a kid’s movie, but it was trying really hard to be more mature than kid-friendly or else it would have really played up the zombie slapstick elements.  It just felt like this movie tried a little too hard to be too many things, and while the visuals were superb, the story didn’t follow suit.

Friday:  Hotel Transylvania

            I went into this one expecting to be thoroughly entertained.  It contained all of the monsters, not just zombies, it had an “all star” voice cast (pretty much everyone you would normally find in an Adam Sandler movie) and the character designs were awesome.  This was a computer animated movie that basically did nothing really wrong but nothing really well.  The animation was pretty, maybe a little too pretty for the subject matter, and the whole thing had kind of a glossy sheen to it.  The character design for everything was very cartoony and exaggerated but incredibly fun at the same time.  It was almost like they were trying to catch a Monsters Inc. vibe with everything but doing it with traditional monsters. 

            This movie had more laugh out loud moments in it for sure, but it also had more cringe-inducing moments than any of the other movies we watched.  The script itself was incredibly formulaic and even more predictable than Para-Norman.  This was kitschy and definitely geared toward young children.  The best part about animation over the last ten to fifteen years is the fact that regardless of what the children’s story is, there are nuggets for the parents as well.  This not only creates more opportunities for parents to watch with their children, but also makes it so that the child will still be interested in the movie years down the road.  Hotel Transylvania lacks a lot of that.  If it wasn’t for the classic monster movie characters I would go out on a limb and say that there would be nothing there for adults. 

            And the music, oh the terrible, horrible musical numbers.  It’s like they were trying to be a traditional Disney cartoon complete with music (or the horrible later Shrek movies) but putting a horrible modern spin on it by having Adam Sandler rap.  It was neither fun nor entertaining and is the kind of thing that would make a parent not watch with their child.

Saturday:  Frankenweenie

            I fully expected to not enjoy this movie.  I’m not sure why but I didn’t anticipate really caring too much about a boy and his dog.  I was incredibly wrong.  This was by far the best movie of the three.

            The character designs were very Burton-esque as to be expected.  They were okay, nothing special in terms of the people.  The animals were wonderfully designed though and the fact that the story took a left turn and introduced more traditional movie monsters was a stroke of genius.  They also seamlessly worked this into the story to the point where kids watching it probably wouldn’t get it as much as the adults watching with them.  This was something I was waiting for all weekend long. 

            The story started out as predictable as I had expected and instead of following the natural conclusion in the science fair, it went off the rails (delightfully so) in the third act and became a monster movie.  This is what I was waiting for in Para-Norman but it never came.  Here the writers were able to meld the sentimentality from the previous two movies with a good deal of humor without really resorting to the traditional tropes of children’s movies.  It was almost as if Burton wanted this to be an adult’s movie that was marketed toward children on accident. 

            The animation itself is halfway between the rawness of The Nightmare Before Christmas and the polish of The Corpse Bride.  I really enjoyed the fact that it was shot all in black and white and it really helped with the overall mood.  The voice acting synched up with the animation perfectly and fit really well with each part cast.  The best part about the voice acting is that no where was there a Johnny Depp to be found; a downright revelation in a modern Tim Burton movie. 

            In short, buy Frankenweenie, rent Para-Norman and borrow Hotel Transylvania.