Reviews for this film from our members:
- Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: Frankenweenie is like catnip for old school horror fans, we get a whiff of homage and pick up the scent of all the horror references and we go crazy with delight.
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Tim Burton ritorna all’animazione in stop motion, per il remake di un suo corto del 1984, che segnò la fine del sodalizio con la Walt Disney Pictures.
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretnsion
- Excerpt: Burton’s creative tiredness in recent years has been indicated by the tendency of his films to crank dutifully from one set-piece to the next. In contrast, Frankenweenie swims smoothly ever forward, gaining velocity as it goes until it essentially becomes a classic adventure picture.
- Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com
- Excerpt: Though the expansion from live-action short to stop motion feature is not without some bumps, Frankenweenie is inspired entertainment that ranks among the more satisfying works of Tim Burton’s colorful career. The film comes close to a greatness that has largely eluded the director and though it loses points for a random rough patch, it still delights much more thoroughly than his underwhelming previous animated efforts.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: it’s been a decade or more since Burton seems to have had a subject that engaged him on a personal level to nearly [this] degree.
- [New – 3/21] | Enrique Buchichio @ Cartelera.com.uy [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Un homenaje afectuoso al Frankenstein de Mary Shelley, en el que Victor es un niño de 10 años, la criatura resucitada es un perro juguetón, y la turba desaforada son los habitantes del vecindario. Un Tim Burton típico.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: It’s not as innovative and clever as “ParaNorman” from a few months back, but it’s still a solid flick the whole family can enjoy.
- Bob Cashill @ Popdose.com
- Excerpt: Disney, classic and contemporary, on Blu-ray.
- Bill Clark @ FromTheBalcony.com
- Excerpt: After a string of disappointments, it’s nice to see Burton get back to his bread and butter: giving us a demented blend of laughs, drama, and scares.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The original short…is more economical story telling, purer. What this “Frankenweenie” does have in spades is heart, even as its boy and his dead dog story circumvents the morals of a monkey’s paw.
- Tom Clift @ Moviedex
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: Much like the films it emulates, Frankenweenie is beautiful in its earnestness. There is none of the cynicism or commercial calculation that has marred everything Burton has made since Big Fish, and it’s the closest he’s come to achieving the mix of wry humour and aching sincerity that characterised his best work for some time.
- Jim Dixon @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Ultimately, August and Burton opt out of the usual “Frankenstein” theme, which is that there are some things best left to God in which man shouldn’t meddle. The end result is humorous, but does force of issue that in the real world you can’t actually hook your dead pet up to a jumper cable and expect a happy ending.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: [W]hile the results are underwhelming, it is one of the better directorial efforts from Burton in a while.
- Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk
- Excerpt: Few things are as touching as a little boy and his dog. Or, if Tim Burton has anything to do with it, nothing is as hauntingly and deliciously evil as a boy bringing his dead dog back to life with old-fashioned electroshock lightning.
- Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com [French]
- Kimberly Gadette @ doddle
- Excerpt: 28 years after the initial short, Frankenweenie finds itself ironically reanimated from the dead, morphed into a superb, 3D stop-motion feature. Young Frankenstein is alive!
- Panagiotis Gkaris @ Movies Ltd
- Excerpt: Deplorably this very principle cannot be effectively applied to Frankenweenie, for it shows neither the edge nor the boldness to play along with past Burtonian freak shows that have become through the years the essential viewing of our beautifully nightmarish adolescence.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Fun-filled and spooky – a weirdly wonderful animated comedy.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The Tim Burton-est movie in a long while, not merely because it embodies all those wonderfully weird and humanist Burton attitudes but also because only Burton would think to make a stop-motion film in glorious, creamy, black-and-white.
- Larsen Josh @ LarsenOnFilm.com
- Excerpt: …when Burton is deeply attuned to the emotional undercurrent of his stories – as he is here – his movies become much more than ghoulish gags.
- Craig Kennedy @ Living in Cinema
- Excerpt: Beautifully animated in black and white stop motion, Tim Burton’s latest is clever, funny, scary and sweet. I’m prepared to forgive him for Alice in Wonderland.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Dan Lybarger @ KCActive.com
- Excerpt: Tim Burton more than redeems himself by resurrecting something he made nearly 30 years ago.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Great to look at and packing an undeniably emotional punch, this entertaining film finds Burton going back to basics and coming up with a winner.
- Ryan McNeil @ The Matinee
- Excerpt: After a series of misfires, can Tim Burton get his mojo back? Perhaps a return to the drawing board will help him find his way.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: Burton has really returned to his roots in Frankenweenie, which not only takes the story from his 1984 live-action feature, but also the animation style of his earlier stop-motion short, Vincent.
- Tiago Ramos @ Split Screen [Portuguese]
- Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Tim Burton’s 3D stop-motion animated reductionist homage to the Golden Era of horror films — namely the Universal films of the ‘30s — is beautiful thing.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guy’s Opinion
- Excerpt: A droll, delightfully macabre little gem.
- Ed Whitfield @ The Ooh Tray
- Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: while drawing on influences from the Golden Age of Universal horror movies such as The Wolfman and Frankenstein, is a animal entirely borne of Burton – and it’s all the better for it.
