Victor Frankenstein

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Paul McGuigan/Starring: James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe, Jessica Brown Findlay, Bronson Webb, Andrew Scott and Charles Dance

One might wonder, while watching Victor Frankenstein; the latest interpretation of Mary Shelley's story, why the world needed another adaptation when so many are so forgettable. Try to remember, if your memory is sound; I, Frankenstein, from 2014. That film, which starred Aaron Eckhart as some sort of superhero Frankenstein; was silly and moronic. If you can't recall the film, it's because it begged you to forget it. Director Paul McGuigan's Frankenstein adaptation isn't quite as bad but it uses every means at its disposal to be forgettable too. In fact, it would rather you didn't wait a day or two after the screening to slip your mind; it demands immediate oblivion.
Though it has a game cast; talented James McAvoy as Victor Frankenstein and Daniel Radcliffe as Igor, and a willingness to tweak the classic story, it nevertheless plays like a tiresome comic book version of Shelley's masterpiece. In fact, much of the inspiration for the story comes not from the novel but Guy Ritchie's inane Sherlock Holmes movies. The look of 19th century London and Victor Frankenstein's bewildering hand-to-hand fighting prowess made me think of Ritchie's ridiculous reimagining of Holmes; who emerged as an action hero in the director's witless interpretation.

McGuigan's story doesn't open with a shot of a castle on a hillside enveloped in stormy atmosphere, but in a circus. An enormous tent is set against the gray, dingy Victorian London skyline. Among the circus performers is a hunchback (Daniel Radcliffe); whose deformity is an indispensable part of his clown persona. When not enduring degradation, which is meted out by cruel management personnel and colleagues alike, he studies human anatomy and medicine. He also moons over the trapeze artist Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay), who suffers a fall during her act. Her broken clavicle, which prevents her from breathing properly, is immediately tended to by the hunchback and a patron who happens to be a doctor. The doctor; Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy), lends his expertise though he is impressed by the hunchback's knowledge of human anatomy and his ability to diagnose the problem. They perform a temporary fix before Dr. Frankenstein offers the hunchback a place in his laboratory. Of course this means escaping from the circus, which becomes a challenge, as the management refuses to part ways with the hunchback. The two escape to Dr. Frankenstein's lab, where the hunchback's hump becomes the focus of Dr. Frankenstein's immediate attention. Through a violent, painful-looking process, the Doctor is able to cure the hunchback of his hunch and correct his severe slouch. He even assigns him the name Igor (borrowed from his former assistant) to help conceal his identity from the circus management.

The two men form an immediate bond and it isn't long before the Doctor shares the secret of his experiments and research (which we already anticipate): the creation of a man from disparate, anatomical parts, which will then be stimulated into life by harnessed electricity. The men set to work on the project and are able to secure funding from an unscrupulous investor named Rafferty (Bronson Webb), who has his own agenda. An obstacle to the project is Inspector Turpin (Andrew Scott), whose religious zealotry makes him the Doctor's hostile foe.

After Igor's make-over, he happens to meet Lorelei at a ball, where his cosmetic overhaul makes him a handsome prospect for her attentions. And while Igor and Lorelei sew the seeds to romance, Dr. Frankenstein tells anyone who will listen about his research in a stentorian voice that is one setting past irritating.

After the Doctor's first creation ends in disaster; his work draws negative attention, which forces him to move his experiments to a new location. Igor, however; becomes disillusioned with Frankenstein's work, which hastens his departure. As the Inspector becomes more aggressive in his plans to thwart Dr. Frankenstein, another attempt at creating a living, breathing entity takes place at a castle-like location. The second attempt serves as the film's climax as Igor, Turpin and Rafferty turn up at the Doctor's new laboratory. Carnage and destruction reign as the new monster vents his rage on everyone in the laboratory.

In the epilogue, we discover the Doctor; who is now a kind of fugitive, seems to have learned nothing from his ill-advised experiment. He also seems un-chastised and unrepentant.

The film's attempt to address the moral and ethical implications of Dr. Frankenstein's efforts to create life takes place during his heated exchanges with Turpin. Though the Doctor's position is ostensibly one of reason; his atheistic convictions turn out to be pretty flimsy as he makes some concessions to the existence of God.

If Shelley's novel serves as a cautionary tale about scientific hubris, McGuigan's is less a warning about scientific overreach than a warning against its suppression by the reactionary attitudes espoused by religion. That seems refreshing but the fact that Victor Frankenstein emerges emotionally and psychically unscathed from his disastrous experiment tells us he has little or no conscience and will remain the reckless, unheeding clown he seems to be throughout the film. Echoing Hollywood's negative attitudes about science, the film ultimately reinforces the notion that scientists are not to be trusted. Only Igor seems to grasp the ominous implications of their work.

Aside from the film's re-imaginings,Victor Frankenstein sinks into a morass of silliness. The look of Victorian England might be gloomy and gray but the film feels almost farcical at times. James McAvoy and Danielle Radcliffe are terrific actors but they are asked to give depth to characters that have motivations but no discernible interesting, interior lives. McAvoy's Frankenstein is an exhausting, hyperactive child who is all Id and no super-ego.

Maybe there should be a moratorium on Frankenstein films. Other than Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, I can't think of a version that is worth re-visiting other than James Whale's original 1931 film. Though far from being the worst Shelley adaptation, Victor Frankenstein is very much like the monster the Doctor tries to resurrect; something dead that should have stayed dead.

Lullaby

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Andrew Levitas/Starring: Richard Jenkins, Garrett Hedlund, Amy Adams, Anne Archer, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard and Jessica Barden

With a cast like that of Lullaby, one might think director Andrew Levitas would have little trouble dramatizing a dying man's last day but somehow an awe-inspiring assemblage of talent can't save what is essentially a dull, tedious, slog.

Richard Jenkins plays Robert Lowenstein, a one-time, cunning business executive who is now literally on his deathbed. He has lost his resolve to fight his illness and is eager to remove the machines and tubes to which he is connected, thus bringing his life to a tragic end. While his wife Rachel (Anne Archer) tends to him, she also defies his efforts to end his life. So far, so fine. Enter his son Jonathan (Garrett Hedlund); a broody, James Dean-like musician who has returned, albeit reluctantly, to see his father and mend the discord between them these past 12 years. Garrett Hedlund is a charismatic actor who has yet to find his breaththrough role. One might remember him from Inside Llewyn Davis as the mysterious, taciturn companion of John Goodman. Here he is the figure around whom other characters and actions seem to revolve, which is strange; given the fact that it is his father who is dying. Not long after Jonathan arrives, his lawyer-sister, petulantly played by Jessica Brown Findlay, shows up to announce she has initiated an injunction to stop her father from ending his life, which is to take place the next day. Jonathan is outraged and angry as the brother/sister animosity surfaces, thus providing the film another conflict.

It is here where the family dynamics are laid bare: Jonathan angry with his father for past offenses, Jonathan angry with sister for vague reasons (though being absent from his father's side for many years is a major component), daughter angrily rejecting her father's wish to die and the mother also fighting her husband's right to die and...anything else? Thankfully no, though Garrett does meet a 17 year-old girl named Meredith (Jessica Barden)--a terminally ill, bone cancer patient-- in the hospital stairwell while enjoying a family-stress smoke. It is an immediate tip-off from their meeting the two will form some sort of bond during this crisis and become friends. Glaring plot contrivance, anyone?

Joining this circus-like melodrama is Jonathan's old flame Emily, inexplicably played by Amy Adams, whose extraordinary talent can often defibrillate the most insipid movies with her presence and charm. I'm not sure what she saw in such a cardboard cut-out of a role but she is mostly around to remind us how Jonathan not only alienated his family in his past but lovers too. How anyone could waste Adams' talent so badly is mystifying. The same can be said for Terrance Howard and Jennifer Hudson--the doctor and nurse duo tending to Robert--whose characters are so marginal in the story one might think they were movie-catering staffers who happened to step in front of the camera. That's three Oscar-nominated actors relegated to dull, peripheral roles while the principal actors are left to play out unconvincing characters unconvincingly. Anne Archer wears a pained expression throughout, but if it's supposed to be grief, it comes off more as acute dyspepsia.

Hedlund's Jonathan is the young, smoking, existential anti-hero that comes in convenience store script six-packs. We know that sooner or later he will reconcile with his old flame (though not rekindle), dance with the terminally ill Meredith at a makeshift hospital room prom and the family will all gather on the father's bed (Doctor too!), for what must be the greatest orgy of tears in cinema this century.

The film concludes with Jonathan performing a song inspired by his father before a substantial theater gathering, while Emily smiles and sings along in the wings. Everything turns out alright; all the strife is washed away, Jonathan and Meredith blow kisses to one another as a final goodbye and life is beautiful again.

I hope the man sitting next to me didn't interpret my heaving chest as uncontrollable sobbing. If he had looked closer, he might have seen me suppressing seismic laughter. If only the film had been a comedy.