Baby Frankenstein
“Baby Frankenstein” is a feature length film that acts as a fun Halloween adventure playing cat and mouse. It has some humor in it to make it a light-hearted take on a friendship that echoes that of the movie “E.T.”. It’s charming at points and downright silly, which works in its favor as it never takes itself too seriously.
The story revolves around Lance and his mother moving into a new home with the help of her sleazebag boyfriend. They have a neighbor that’s nice, but in an awkward-weird way, and another neighbor across the street, Truth, who Lance eventually teams up with. Well, why does he team up with her? Because he uncovers something in his attic, an automatonic tiny being who wakes up. Welcome Baby Frankenstein. Not sure what to do or how to handle this new creature, he enlists Truth to help him. In the process his sleazebag mom’s boyfriend finds the Baby Frankenstein and tries to hunt him down. He only gets more motivated to take down Baby Frankenstein when Mr. Lundquist shows up and offers $50k for any information as he was notified when Baby Frankenstein turned on. The rest of the movie has Lance and Truth hiding with their new friend.
This whole movie has an innocent vibe. And by that I mean it’s never too serious and it’s just a fun journey watching these two friends help their newly found friend hide from all of this mess. From a bowling alley, to their neighbor’s house, to hiding under a sheet to play off as being a ghost for Halloween. Each new place we see these characters go to they go through different experiences that really tighten their bond with one another while some quirky things happen that ends up being charming.
The the thing that stood out to me the most in this film was the makeup of Baby Frankenstein. He has such an interesting visual appeal to him. His dome is made of glass so we can see his brain and his eyes are an electric white along with green skin. I’m curious as to how they exactly pulled off the makeup effects. It looks very time consuming, yet it looked realistic. I loved that aspect. Another part I enjoyed was the direction and cinematography. The director had a clear vision and simply told the story. He was able to move it from point A to point B rather seamlessly. There were angles and subtle camera movements that really moved the story forward and allowed the actors and actresses to bring their characters to life. It had a style and gave the film a voice.
Overall, I liked this for what it was. It reminded me a lot of the 1980 flicks and at times seemed to really embrace those influences. I felt nostalgic watching this film due to some of those reminders. I smiled at other parts of the movie that felt genuine. The overall message is about friendship and you can never hate a movie that makes you feel good near the end; which is exactly what this one did.
