Movie Review: Igor (2008)

John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno, Molly Shannon and Jennifer Coolidge all lend their voices to this animated film.

As huge classic horror movie fans, my oldest daughter and I were both interested in seeing this film when it first came out a few years ago and, when we recently had the opportunity to watch it again, we took advantage of it. Both times we watched this film, we weren't disappointed.

I think what I liked best about this film was the way it gave the evil scientist concept a fresh new perspective. Rather than having the scientists being evil for the sake of being evil (as is usually the case in monster films), the scientists in this movie were pretty much in that role because they felt they had no other choice because the eternal darkness destroyed their crops and made it impossible for their kingdom to survive any other way. I liked this because, as my daughter and I have discussed numerous times in the past, one of the things missing from most monster movies is an explanation about why the scientist decided to create the monster in the first place.

My biggest concern about this film when we first watched it was I figured it would be very predictable and, because of that, not very good. However, that just wasn't the case. The film has a lot of surprising twists and turns that do keep the film from having a familiar plot. This includes the monster, Eva (Shannon), being brainwashed into believing she was an actress and a last-second revelation about the real origin of the storm clouds.

I think the thing that really won me over about this movie, however, were the various supporting characters. This included a rabbit (Buscemi) that couldn't die. A living brain (Hayes) that was an idiot and an evil scientist (Izzard) with a history of stealing inventions. They complemented the main characters/storyline perfectly, something that isn't always the case with movies like this.

One of my favorite things about this movie has to be the final battle at the end, with a variety of evil experiments duking it out with each other. I loved the creativity with the inventions and the way they were used in the doomsday machine battle royale. Of course, the most memorable part of that still ended up being Eva and the way she sang while fighting. My entire family loved that.

This is a unique movie that is surprisingly funny. My daughter and I enjoyed it each time we watched it and I would highly recommend it if you haven't seen it before.

My Grade: A