BURTON CLASSIC REBORN
Acclaimed director reworks his own ‘80s short into monster movie mash-up Frankenweenie,
Frankenweenie
(out of 4) Starring the voices of Charlie Tahan, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short. Directed by Tim Burton. 90 minutes. Opens Oct. 5 at major theatres. PG Tim Burton’s comic monster movie mash-up Frankenweenie tosses blackand-white bouquets at the golden age of Hollywood horror.
And it shows revenge is a dish best served in 3-D with this entertaining stop-motion animated feature reborn from the live-action short that got him fired from studio Disney in 1984.
Back when Burton made his Frankenweenie short starring Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern he didn’t get much studio love. Your stuff is too dark, the brass at the mouse house pronounced. So Burton packed his pencils and went elsewhere to make the likes of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, along with animated offerings including the Oscarnominated Corpse Bride. Boo to you, too, Disney.
Burton and Disney made up long ago with The Nightmare Before Christmas and now we have the reanimation (in both senses) of the once-dead Frankenweenie.
Canadian comic actors Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short each get triple billing in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, opening Friday. The SCTV alums hope people don’t figure out before the final credits which characters they actually voice (they do three each) in Burton’s black-and-white stop-motion animation about a boy who brings his beloved dog, Sparky, back to life.
Principally, O’Hara and Short are the voices of young science whiz Victor Frankenstein’s parents: travel agent dad and suburban mom.
“All those voices that we create, they’re almost random, so you come up with many different choices and Tim (Burton) responds to this or responds to that,” said Short, who appears to be having a blast doing the press rounds with O’Hara in advance of Frankenweenie’s opening.
“What I like is, Tim puts the credits at the end, so people don’t know that Mr. Burgermeister (the irascible town mayor) is the same guy as Nassor (Victor’s Boris Karloff-like school chum).”
And he’s also the same guy as Frankenstein the dad: Short.
O’Hara, who had her first major movie role in Burton’s Beetlejuice as social climbing mom Delia Deetz, reunites in voice, if not in person, onscreen in Frankenweenie with Beetlejuice co-star Winona Ryder. Ryder, who played Delia’s morose daughter, Lydia, in the 1988 comedy-horror, voices next-door neighbour Elsa Van Helsing in Frankenweenie.
“I honestly was as happy to get together again and see him and hang out with him as I was to work with him,” said O’Hara of working with Burton again. “Now I can brag about doing three characters in (one) Tim Burton movie.”
In addition to Mrs. Frankenstein, O’Hara voices the aptly named Weird Girl, who divines the future based on the litter-box leavings of her pampered puss, Mr. Whiskers, along with the bossy Gym Teacher.
“This is the nicest mom I think I’ve ever played. I’ve played troubled moms,” said O’Hara brightly. Her best-known maternal role was the forgetful Kate McCallister, who leaves son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) behind in the 1990s Home Alone comedies.
O’Hara and Short, whose friendship goes back to the 1970s when they were part of the hilarious sketch comedy TV show SCTV, say they were pleased that Burton took the rare step of putting them in an L.A. studio together to record their Frankenweenie dialogue. Usually animation actors do their voice work alone.
“We voiced it together, which is very unusual,” said Short.
“It really had the intimacy,” added O’Hara.
But isn’t it tough for two such funny people to stick to the work at hand when they get together?
“No! We’re professionals!” laughed O’Hara. “And we see each other a lot; we have cottages near each other.”
Besides, said Short, who was wearing his Order of Canada insignia in his suit lapel, “Tim was either present or he was Skyping and you don’t want to just giggle for half an hour as he sits there.”
They only had drawings of their characters to go on; the animation is done later, Short explained.
“We saw the illustrations so we knew what they looked like and we have the dialogue, so it was like honouring the illustration,” explained O’Hara.
Both Short and O’Hara have extensive experience doing animation voices. Short’s Stefano the seal was a hit in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted this summer and O’Hara made Monster House, Chicken Little and Over the Hedge, not to mention Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Both were anxious to work with Burton again (Short was in 1996’s Mars Attacks!).
“Tim is this kind of brilliant artist who does things because they’re passionate to him, as a true artist can do,” said Short. “And I think you can count on one hand the number of artists that are working in film. So when one phones, you don’t have your agent blow it over the per diem.”