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We watched this last night and it was just as delightfully bonkers as the trailers had promised. Bride of Frankenstein, 1930s crime film, feminist fable, ghost story, musical, the parts don’t always fit together perfectly but it doesn’t matter because it’s an exquisite-corpse about an exquisite corpse (Jesse Buckley), an escort formerly known as Ida till possession by Mary Shelley’s ghost (also Jesse Buckley) moved up the Chicago mob’s time-table on bumping her off for knowing too much.
As it happens, Frankenstein’s monster (ChristianSlater Bale) is in town and wants Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to make him a mate—one trip to the potter’s field and a jolt of electricity and revitalizing fluid and our heroine is back, still intermittently channelling Mary, and ready to revolt and to dance. I love that Gyllenhaal makes one of the key scenes in the film a tribute to the Puttin’ on the Ritz number in Young Frankenstein. This is a movie that loves all its sources. It rolls around in them.
I haven’t even brought up Penélope Cruz and Peter Saarsgard as police detectives who seem to have wandered in from a completely different movie, Jeannie Berlin as Dr. Euphronius’ walking Otto Dix painting of a maid, or the monster’s fanboy crush on polio-survivor-turned-movie-star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). Zlatko Burić, who seems to be making a career of playing sleazebags, is appropriately vile as the mob boss Lupino, but he’s only in a couple of scenes because it’s not really about him.
Apparently this has been a box-office bomb. I hope Gyllenhaal’s directing career doesn’t suffer for it, and I hope the movie gets a cult following in the coming years with midnight screenings and the audience showing up in costume. I know I plan to watch it again.
ETA— Good soundtrack, too.
As it happens, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian
I haven’t even brought up Penélope Cruz and Peter Saarsgard as police detectives who seem to have wandered in from a completely different movie, Jeannie Berlin as Dr. Euphronius’ walking Otto Dix painting of a maid, or the monster’s fanboy crush on polio-survivor-turned-movie-star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). Zlatko Burić, who seems to be making a career of playing sleazebags, is appropriately vile as the mob boss Lupino, but he’s only in a couple of scenes because it’s not really about him.
Apparently this has been a box-office bomb. I hope Gyllenhaal’s directing career doesn’t suffer for it, and I hope the movie gets a cult following in the coming years with midnight screenings and the audience showing up in costume. I know I plan to watch it again.
ETA— Good soundtrack, too.
