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100It is pure, retro-cinematic joy.
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100The movie, a simple yet immensely pleasurable tale of a little boy and his undead dog, is good enough on its own. If you know the back story, it's even better.
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91Frankenweenie is a cool little flipbook of historical Burtonian style. It even brings back old friends, including "Beetlejuice's" Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara.
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91It says something, then, that Burton's best, most enjoyable, and most emotionally resonate film in years is actually an adaptation of one of his very first projects: Frankenweenie.
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90Frankenweenie has that youthful verve and the ghoulishness of strange kids who will some day be eccentric creators. This movie is an attic experiment for its makers to be proud of and for audiences to cherish.
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90This magnificent stop-motion cartoon is alive - "it's alive! - with laughs and heart.
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89Frankenweenie is that rare film that's both kid- and adult-friendly.
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88Frankenweenie is a love story between a boy and his dog. It is also a beautifully crafted homage to classic horror films, a study of grief and a commentary on the mysteries of science and those who narrow-mindedly fear its advances.
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88This delightfully twisted story about a boy and his (dead) dog showcases precisely what Burton excels at: blending the macabre and the heartfelt in a perfect, if oddball, union.
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88Tim Burton's best film in years.
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88Getting creeped out has never seemed this totally cool.
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Oct 5, 201285It's probably too early to peg Frankenweenie as Burton's comeback vehicle, but it's certainly the director's best movie in twenty years.
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83Frankenweenie is stitched together with love and a bit raggedy, like Sparky the dog in question.
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83Burton's id explodes onto the screen with a plethora of demonic mutated critters.
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80Very sweet, very funny, really quite touching and exquisitely handmade, by a film lover with humour and a heart, for a like-minded audience.
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80Filmmaking is a product of the heart and the head, at least when it's at its best.
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80Burton's extraordinary powers of imagination are in dazzling bloom, from the gorgeous stop-motion animation to the goofy, homemade horror movies the children direct.
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Oct 2, 201280Frankenweenie, scripted by John August, and based on a screenplay by Lenny Ripps from Burton's original story, is tight and brief, hitting all the marks you'd expect from an animated kid's film, and enlivened by Burton's visual style. The man should make more small movies like this one.
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Sep 22, 201280Burton's finest, freshest film in ages is a welcome homecoming. You'd call it patchwork pastiche, if it weren't so zapped with energy, feeling and imagination. It's alive!
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75You have to feel pleased just for the existence of a film like Tim Burton's Frankenweenie. A 3-D, black-and-white, stop-motion animated film, it's a one-man blow for cinematic biodiversity.
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75While the big-headed, spindly puppets don't evoke enough emotion to make the movie a must-see, Burton's 3-D design team pours its heart into the monochrome surroundings, from the suburban décor to Victor's laboratory to the carnival midway.
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75It's great fun.
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75Frankenweenie seems like a genuine effort to pass along this love to the next generation, and if one kid who sees it goes home and demands to watch another movie featuring a giant turtle, it will have done its job.
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75This is a more personal movie for Burton than one might initially suspect. The very fact that he elected to re-tell this story after 28 years is an indication of how much it means to him. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, as a kid, he had a dog named Sparky.
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75This isn't one of Burton's best, but it has zealous energy. It might have been too macabre for kids in past, but kids these days, they've seen it all, and the charm of a boy and his dog retains its appeal.
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Oct 5, 201270The picture is frustrating not because it's bad, but because of how almost-good it is.
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70He (Burton) has used that tonality deftly here, it keeps Frankenweenie visually stunning and the sensibility light. It's too bad the tale, like Sparky's wagging appendage, keeps falling off.
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70While Frankenweenie is fun, it is not nearly strange or original enough to join the undead, monstrous ranks of the classics it adores.
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70This beautifully designed canine-resurrection saga feels, somewhat fittingly, stitched together from stray narrative parts, but nonetheless evinces a level of discipline and artistic coherence missing from the director's recent live-action efforts.
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63The entire project is carefully wrought in visual terms and more than a little familiar. Sometimes even a well-applied pair of jumper cables can't do the trick.
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63Nothing in the longer Frankenweenie is new.
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60It's a likable film, though not a sensational development in Tim Burton's career.
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60There's no question it looks fantastic...As for the story, well, much like the original Frankenstein's monster, it is a haphazard assemblage of well-aged source materials jolted back to life with new technology, but it isn't quite as sophisticated as one might hope.
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60Though the tale demands a darker outcome, the director disappointingly goes the Mouse House happy-ending route with a reprise of the original short film's finale - one that somehow plays with even more cringeworthy sentimentality.
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50It's not so much a miscalculation of his audience by Burton as it is a disregard. What lingers after Frankenweenie, far more than its stunning technique, is a sad suggestion of solipsism.
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50While Frankenweenie is pleasant enough as a curated tour through horror's past, it doesn't add much to its present.
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50It is nonetheless imaginative in a highly familiar and ultimately tedious way.
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38Tim Burton's sense of playfulness feels forced throughout, and as the film progresses, any humor or inventiveness takes a backseat to tumultuous set pieces that reference Frankenstein.