DEAD ON ARRIVAL
Lisa Frankenstein
Cast: Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano, Cole Sprouse, Carla Gugino Director: Zelda Williams Duration: 1 h 41 m
The equal parts forgettable and regrettable teen comedy Lisa Frankenstein stars Kathryn Newton (best known as Paul Rudd’s daughter in the latest Antman movie) as the title character, a mopey high school misfit whose spiritual predecessors are Beetlejuice-era Winona and Desperately Seeking Susan-era Madonna.
Those references are just two in a zillion that hang on this drearily derivative pastiche, wherein Lisa befriends the reanimated corpse of a 19th-century romantic, then enlists her newfound bestie to help foil her enemies and snag the boy of her dreams — the hunky editor of the school literary magazine, played by Henry Eikenberry. Aggressively set in 1989, Lisa Frankenstein is rife with nods to the time period, with every frame stuffed to the gills with leg warmers, tape players, rosepink tabletop accessories and moussed-out hair. The soundtrack is a similar burlesque of synth-pop one-hit wonders and the REO Speedwagon power balled Can’t Fight This Feeling.
It’s all supposed to be played for laughs, but in the hands of screenwriter Diablo Cody (who won an Oscar for the overpraised 2007 teen-pregnancy comedy Juno), it’s tinged with her signature brand of punny, decidedly unfunny humour and glib, pseudo-edgy jokes about feminine hygiene and sexuality. (Lisa’s last name is Swallows. You do the math.) In an era when female agency and sexual autonomy have taken on new currency in Hollywood, Cody’s version of feminism is less genuine interrogation or empowerment than casual asides about menstruation — which might have felt revolutionary the first time she did it, but by now feel opportunistic and played out.
Cole Sprouse is game but barely recognizable as Lisa’s zombie in the friend zone; Carla Gugino brings brittle jitteriness to a thankless role as Lisa’s emotionally abusive stepmother; the brightest light in these dismal proceedings might be Liza Soberano’s Taffy, whose character delivers disarmingly sincere comeuppance to clichéd tropes of vapid beauty queens and mean-girl cheerleaders.
That sweet little subversion aside, Lisa Frankenstein makes for mostly grim watching. Zelda Williams, making her directorial debut here, manages to create a few arrestingly stylized sequences, including the animated shadow play that synopsizes Sprouse’s character’s backstory, and a dream sequence inspired by German expressionism and MTV (as if that isn’t redundant). As for the rest, it’s safest to reserve judgment, considering she’s been asked to execute a scattershot, gratingly self-amused script that continually mistakes inanely obvious wordplay for cleverness, and snark for wit.
Reportedly, Lisa Frankenstein is meant to exist in the same universe as Cody’s 2009 comedy Jennifer’s Body. But whereas that equally try-hard teen-com became something of a cult classic, it’s hard to see this one lurching toward the same fate; it feels too dated for that, not to mention too disposably slapdash and just plain lazy.
In one scene, I could have sworn I saw a QR code peeking out from a character’s spiral notebook. But maybe it was just the props trying to escape from a crass, obnoxious, woefully misbegotten movie. To which hapless viewers can only respond: Take us with you.ω