Knight Owl's Review of I, Frankenstein; Going Underworld

Wow.

Just Wow with this movie.

It's been a while since I sat down and tore a film apart for being just so bad. If you've seen my SooToday reviews (please do, I'll make sure to post a link to the bottom), you know that I've had to clean up my act a bit and make with the clean language and the full-on liking of the film I'm writing about. It basically means that I have to go out and find films that either I and/or the general public liked or should like and sing its praises as non-aggressively as possible. Not here. Here I say whatever I goddamn please.

And this fucking movie is just so bad, it's good.

So first off, I do hope that whoever owns the rights to Underworld is aware that this movie blatantly stole from the contents of the Vampire-vs-Werewolf series. They aren't similar. No homages or subtle references. Straight up theft. A supernatural being is, through no fault of his own, thrust into the middle of a secret war between two immortal factions. The synopsis pretty well fits either film, only Underworld includes a love story and Kate freaking Beckinsale(!), thus making Frankenstein the inferior film.

And another thing: the 'secret war, waging for centuries blah blah blah' trope. Come on, now. Seriously, how many secret wars can possibly be going on in this post-9/11 hashtag world of ours? The soldiers in this particular war involve ugly fuckers with horns and shit beating on rather large, winged gargoyles wielding huge medieval weapons. And there are several scenes in this film that were just not discrete at all, in the middle of major metropolitan areas. Really? No one is seeing this? I know the trope has appeared in other films such as The Matrix, Men In Black, pretty much every vampire slayer film or series out there. But at least with these examples there was a modicum of subtlety, or at least a flashy-thingy or some MacGuffin designed to keep the war a secret. Not with this movie, and no one seems to give a shit about the flying stone people picking up bystanders and setting them ablaze, or the massive explosion in the middle of town. Don't worry, guys, nothing to see here I guess.

Let's talk about the cast. First off, we have Aaron 'I Believe in Harvey Dent' Eckhart as the titular monster. And by 'monster' I of course mean the handsomest creation to be concocted out of one or more dead bodies since Peter Boyle in a tux in Young Frankenstein. It states in the film that the monster, or 'Adam', is made up of something like eight different bodies. If that's true, then they were the bodies of eight identical people because the pieces fit together more easily than a jigsaw puzzle designed for first-graders (or Justin Bieber).

"Yeah, this all looks fine Igor, but where did you find the butt-chin?"

Oh, and whoever was in charge of keeping Adam's make-up consistent deserves a punch in the neck. There are way too many close ups of Eckhart's handsome face to be fucking up on his make-up as much as these people did. There were scenes where half the scars that were previously present on his face were just not there. Others where it just looked like Eckhart came in off the street, didn't bother with the make-up at all, and did his thing. I don't know who is to blame, but necks need to be punched.

This movie would be nigh-unwatchable if not for the great Bill Nighy returning to his role from Underworld appearing in a role that we have totally never seen him play before. Few are as good at blatant overacting as good ol' Davy Jones here. The steely eyes, the perma-frown and oh, the over-enunciation! Nearly every sentence of his is punctuated by a '~zah!' Anyone who's ever seen a Pirates of the Caribbean film knows what I'm talking about. It's also nice to see Yvonne Strahovski in things, although I have a rocky relationship with her right now. She was delightful in Chuck, but was also a big factor in Dexter becoming the fart noise that was the final episode. Oh well, she's hot. I'll forgive her.

The visuals were pretty much what I expected, same grade as any other genre flick of this nature: kinda cartoony with a little bit of money and 3D to make it look not terrible. The times where prosthetics were used, mainly on the demons in the film, were very reminiscent of Joss Whedon's work with Buffy and Angel, endearing me to the film somewhat. The action scenes were full of the slow-motion, hard hitting, property damaging fare that, like the visuals of the film, are so commonplace in films today that I can't even think of a specific example. Oh yeah, fucking UNDERWORLD.

So yeah, this movie was a laughable good time, in that it was so very bad and had no right to not be a direct-to-DVD B-movie. And if Rotten Tomatoes is to be believed, no one is arguing with me. Hell, it was opening night when I went to see it and the place was desolate. I would have much rather seen the Adam character hornswoggled into the Underworld franchise so that he would fall in love with Kate Beckinsale and have the most beautiful undead babies.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's my quota for fanfic writing for my entire life. You're welcome.

Knight Owl