Non-stop homage to the classics

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2007)

The kind of film I normally avoid. Being a connoisseur of the old Universal films of the 30s and early 40s, I refused to watch it out of loyalty for the franchise that Lugosi and Karloff and Chaney created. Then I happened to watch the opening scene. This movie has no plot that could engage anyone with half a brain, mixes up lore and myth (when I go to the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris I expect to see Quasimodo, not Mr.Hyde of Edinburgh, especially as the former is at least Universal property), smothers everything in cgi, throws in one lame plot device after another to extricate itself from the holes it digs for itself etc etc etc. and yet... for someone 13 and under it is the kind of movie to be seen over and over again. Kind o like the originals (it's hard to defend the integrity of films such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman after all). Not one dull moment, some wonderful characterisations of old classics (I particularly enjoyed that of Dracula), a great soundtrack and some loving attentions of detail that stand out amidst the sloppy and lazy areas such as when a piece of paper obtained centuries earlier still has the exact same shape and hue as the outlying wall from which it was removed). The atmosphere too evokes something out of Karl Freund. www.lairdkeir.spaces.live.com