VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN (Paul McGuigan). 109 minutes. Opens Friday (November 27). See listings. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: iTunes
What’s it like to be a mad scientist’s best friend?
Victor Frankenstein is a most enthusiastic reworking of Mary Shelley’s enduring tale of the “Modern Prometheus” as seen through the eyes of the mad doctor’s assistant.
In screenwriter Max Landis’s formulation, Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) is neither a brute nor a fool but a sweet-natured naïf with a knack for anatomy and a longing for a trapeze artist (Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay) whom he knew in his former life as a circus freak.
Victor, though? He’s a monster – or at least a maniac, interpreted by James McAvoy as a frothing genius bent on creating life by any unholy means necessary.
McAvoy and Radcliffe are clearly having a ball playing these characters, and director Paul McGuigan matches their goofball energy in the first two-thirds of the picture as they perform their icky experiments and stay one step ahead of an obsessed copper (Spectre’s Andrew Scott).
It’s only once everything’s in place for the grand finale – set in the requisite lonely castle – that the movie is overwhelmed by the requirements of the Frankenstein story and the characters become little more than action figures in an elaborate playset. But, oh, those first two-thirds are a delight.
