Film review: Igor

Igor @ IMDB

As previously mentioned, everyone wants a piece of the animated kids film pie. Now we have The Weinsteins, known more for their indie flavoured movies and Oscar baiting attempts at serious cinema, sticking their oar in to the kids market.

Give it it's due, it's not following the usual cute animal path. Here we have Igor, part of a society of Mad Scientists who create evil inventions for a yearly contest which is used to blackmail the rest of the world into paying money for so the scientists don't unleash the inventions on the world.

But only mad scientists can create inventions, not Igors. However, one Igor has got an idea...

So we're in Tim Burton/Nightmare Before Christmas territory. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't push as far as a Burton film would. It's very much a kids film despite the 'shocks' that it creates. It keeps to mawkish sentimentality rather than the subversive atmosphere of something like Nightmare Before Christmas.

This lack of effort goes into the voice acting as well, as several name actors phone in their performances for an easy pay day. It's obvious in it's themes (everyone is special! Yawn.) and lazy in it's plotting.

It's not that it's bad, it's just in that horrible section of kids films that don't try. Which seems to be in the majority these days.

In a word? Lazy.