Igor

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Igor is a kids' movie that's just cute enough for parents to be able to sit through. If you're looking for Pixar, look...well, look at a Pixar movie. Igor isn't as amusing or accessible, and its computer-generated animation is worse, although actually not as bad as I was expecting: it doesn't cut as many corners as Hoodwinked, and is probably on a par with Madagascar.

The best thing about Igor is that it knows how to make dialogue witty without turning it into a series of awkward pop-culture references -- I'm looking at you, Space Chimps. That movie shoehorned jokes in that no kid would understand in an attempt to appeal to parents, whereas Igor actually has funny dialogue that can appeal to kids and parents alike. Okay, mostly kids -- most adults don't like jokes about poop as much as I do -- but it is a movie for kids, after all.

The story is convoluted: in the magic land of Malaria, where dark storm clouds perpetually hang overhead, a series of mad/evil scientists compete in the annual Evil Science Fair, all with the help of ugly hunchbacked assistants that are all called Igor. One particular Igor (John Cusack) secretly wants to be a scientist himself, and when one of his master's experiments goes horribly wrong, he gets his chance and succeeds at creating a real-life monster: a gigantic woman named Eva (Molly Shannon) who, through strange complications of the plot, develops the personality of a high-maintenance actress.

Helping Igor out are his sidekicks, who in keeping with the cheesy monster movie theme are slightly unconventional: Scamper (Steve Buscemi), an immortal rat who keeps killing himself and then coming back to life, and Brain (Sean Hayes), a dim-witted brain in a jar. (The running joke about Scamper constantly causing himself harm is questionable; make sure your younger kids know that unlike him, they're not immortal.) Also rounding out the cast are Jay Leno as the king of Malaria and Eddie Izzard as Dr. Schadenfreude, the evilest of the evil doctors who always steals his rivals' inventions in order to win the fair.

And that's about it; hopefully I've given you a pretty good idea what to expect. I'm fairly confident that little kids of the right inclination will find it hilarious; if I was six, I would've gotten a huge kick out of it. For parents, it provides all the clever puns and non-sequiturs and hipness that you'd expect from a mid-range computer-animated movie, as well as a solid moral about doing the right thing, as opposed to the evil thing.

Movie Grade: B-

Synopsis:

A playfully irreverent comedy with a new twist to the classic monster genre, "Igor" is the story of a mad scientist's hunchbacked lab assistant who has big dreams of becoming a scientist in his own right and winning the coveted first place award at the annual Evil Science Fair.