One of my good friends inadvertently recommended I, Frankenstein to me. We both are into kind of kitschy/crappy movies, and he sent me an e-mail where he was talking about everything he'd seen recently, and finished it up with: "I, Frankenstein... Oh my god." And oddly enough, that's probably more of a recommendation to me than someone saying "so-and-so is pretty good." So thanks for tip!
"Oh my god," if said while averting your eyes and slowly shaking your head, is a pretty good summation of I, Frankenstein. It just goes to show you what can happen if you just throw a bunch of money at any comic book property and try to turn it into a slick, CGI-filled blockbuster. Although the January release date tells me there wasn't an awful lot of faith in it anyways. It's a mess, and the writers didn't seem to think Frankenstein (I'm calling him that, not Frankenstein's Monster) is an interesting enough character to support even part of the story - we get a very brief history of his creation, and then he's thrust into a war between demons and the Holy Gargoyle Order (?). Because I guess just being Frankenstein wouldn't give you an excuse to kill a bunch of CGI demons now, would it?
The demons want to capture Frankenstein because he holds the secret of reanimation. They have a bunch of souls stuck in hell, and if they knew how to reanimate soulless bodies, they could just insert the demon souls into them. Seems like a good plan! Battling the demons (on the side of God, I guess) is the gargoyles, led by Leonore (Miranda Otto) - honestly, I checked out about ten minutes in once she introduced herself as the "High Queen of the Gargoyle Order." That's a hard line to deliver with a straight face. Some movies could pull that off, but I, Frankenstein tries to go grim and gritty but have malarkey like that in there at the same time - you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Anyways, for a bit this seems like it's going to be I, Frankenstein - Demon Hunter, as Frankenstein (re-christened as "Adam" by Leonore) figures "they're going to hunt me, so I may as well hunt them." That may have been an interesting take, but they call that off too - Leonore gives Adam shit, saying they have to fight this battle in secret, away from the humans. (Which is ridiculous considering the amount of destruction they cause later, but whatever.)
So basically I, Frankenstein abandons two potentially interesting takes on things (a slick update on his creation, and a Demon-hunting Frankenstein) and settles on a boring CGI-spot fest, where Adam fights on the side of the gargoyles to destroy the demons, then fights the demons on his own, then with the gargoyles again.
The gargoyles like him, then don't, then do, then don't - really it's a pretty convoluted mess - and trying to explain it makes me realize that there is a lot going on in this movie. But it's all a bunch of nonsense, and it's all in the service of getting to the next extended fight scene between the demons and the gargoyles.
I feel bad for Aaron Eckhart (playing I here) in this one. He really seems to be giving it his all... he does his best Christian Bale as Batman impression, delivering all his lines in a super-gruff, low voice. He does a lot of good acrobatic fighting stuff - at least what you see that isn't obscured by CGI demons "descending." (You see, when he hits the demons with one of his consecrated nightsticks, they burst into flames and shoot down to hell). His Adam is just not a compelling character. So it's certainly not on Eckhart that this doesn't work - he may be getting a little old for the action star thing, but I'd be willing to give him another shot... if Liam Neeson can do it, he certainly can.
The main offense to me was the overabundance of CGI though. It's just a slog to get through - everything looks pretty crisp (although the gargoyles look a little too cartoony), but there isn't any excitement to the proceedings. It's all been there, done that and pixel overkill. I don't really know what else to say about it. I watched it yesterday and it's already fleeting from my mind.
I will say this - I think if I was drunk and saw it in the theater with my friend (who inadvertently recommended it to me), we'd probably enjoy ourselves.
And it's better than Van Helsing, at least.
I would not recommend this film.
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