Igor (2008)

***Igor*** is a 2008 computer-animated horror comedy film directed by Tony Leondis from a screenplay by Chris McKenna. *Igor*, developed and produced by Max Howard with the California-based Exodus Film Group, was the first feature-length animated film to be financed with private equity. The animation was completed at France's Sparx Animation Studios and a facility in Vietnam. It was distributed in North America by MGM Distribution Co. and internationally by The Weinstein Company. It is MGM's first fully computer-animated film as well as the studio's first fully animated film in twelve years following 1996's *All Dogs Go to Heaven 2*.

*Igor* features the voices of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Jay Leno, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Coolidge, Arsenio Hall, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, and Christian Slater. Conceived by McKenna as a twisting of evil scientist film tropes, *Igor* features Cusack as the titular Igor, who lives in the kingdom of Malaria where others of his kind serve as assistants to evil scientists. In trying to achieve his dream to become an evil scientist, Igor accidentally creates a sweet female monster named Eva.

*Igor*'s first teaser trailer premiered at the 2008 New York Comic Con before being released online on May 7, 2008. Promoted with a video game, toys, books, comic books, and fast-food tie-ins, *Igor* premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on September 13, 2008, before starting its American nationwide theatrical run five days later.

## Plot

The Kingdom of Malaria was once a peaceful land of farmers, until its environment was devastated by a mysterious storm that never ended and killed all of its crops, thus driving its inhabitants into poverty. In response, Malaria's ruler, King Malbert, initiates a plan to save the country by having the kingdom's best and most wicked scientists create various doomsday devices and blackmail the rest of the world into paying them by threatening to unleash these devices upon the world. As a result, Malaria becomes a dark country where evil reigns supreme. There is also an annual Evil Science Fair that takes place in an arena known as the Kiliseum, where the inventions fight one another while being broadcast to the rest of the planet. The scientists responsible for these inventions are treated as celebrities, while citizens with hunchbacks are treated as second-class, usually referred to by the derogatory name "Igor" and are often employed as lowly servants for these scientists.

One Igor, however, is a talented inventor and aspires to be an evil scientist himself. Among his inventions are his friends Scamper, an immortal, nihilistic and suicidal rabbit, and Brain, an unintelligent robot with a human brain transplanted into a life support jar. Unfortunately, he must keep his talent a secret out of fear of being sent to the "Igor Recycling Plant", especially from his master, the incompetent Dr. Glickenstein. Meanwhile, another evil scientist, Dr. Schadenfreude, becomes immensely popular due to winning several Evil Science Fairs in a row. In truth, he always steals the prize-winner from other scientists before the fair with help of his shape-shifting girlfriend, Jaclyn, as part of his desires to overthrow King Malbert and rule Malaria as its new king.

One day, Glickenstein is visited by his "girlfriend" Heidi (who is actually Jaclyn in disguise attempting to steal his plans), giving Igor aspirations of romance. After throwing out Heidi, Glickenstein ignores Igor's concerns of using better parts for his latest invention, which is a rocket ship that malfunctions and explodes, taking Glickenstein with it. At this same moment, King Malbert arrives to see Glickenstein and demand that he builds an invention that could defeat Schadenfreude, who Malbert fears will replace him as king due to his popularity. Unable to tell the truth of Glickenstein's death and seizing the opportunity, Igor boldly claims that Glickenstein is creating life, which greatly pleases Malbert, who proclaims that such an invention would make its creator the greatest evil scientist of all time. After the king leaves, Igor reveals to Scamper and Brain his project to create a huge and monstrous being from human remains.

With Brain and Scamper's help, he assembles the giant, and adds an "evil bone" that will make it pure evil. It first seems his experiment failed but seconds later, the monster reveals to have come alive and later escapes. They later find the giantess in an orphanage playing with blind orphans. At the same time, Schadenfreude sneaks into Glickenstein's castle to steal his invention, but he not only discovers that Glickenstein is dead, but his Igor had created a living monster, which he believes will be his key to taking the throne.

Igor manages to lead the giant back to the castle with flowers that she likes. There, he discovers that the evil bone he gave her was not activated, making the monster sweet, friendly and gentle despite being hideous. Igor attempts to activate the evil bone by commanding the monster to kill a fly, but she instead catches it and sets it outside. Igor tries to convince the monster that she is evil but fails as the gentle giantess misinterpreted it as "Eva", thinking that's the name he gave her. Igor later attempts to brainwash Eva into becoming evil by bringing her to a brainwashing salon. Brain also decides to get his brain cleaned and to watch TV but breaks the remote to his TV, so he takes the remote from Eva's room and, in an attempt to change the channel, inadvertently changes the monster's TV channel from a horror movie marathon to a talk show whose topic of the day is the history of acting. She ends up watching the talk show for several hours and upon leaving the salon, she can speak proper English and aspires to be an actress.

On the way back to the castle, Schadenfreude chases after Igor in an attempt to steal Eva by using a shrink ray, only to fail and end up shrinking himself. Igor and his friends nearly go over a cliff, but Eva saves them all, showing her appreciation of all life. Igor then gets the idea to exhibit Eva at the science fair while lying to her that the fair is an "Annie" audition with a few differences. While helping Eva with the “play”, Igor slowly starts to fall for her, who tries to convince him that its always better to be good than evil, no matter how much more successful evil is.

Dr. Schadenfreude takes Igor to his home revealing he knows about Glickenstein's death and Eva, so he offers a compromise, if Igor gives him Eva to overthrow King Malbert he will make Igor Malaria's number one scientist. However, Igor refuses forcing Schadenfreude to refute to blackmail. Igor narrowly escapes but is too late to stop Schadenfreude from exposing Igor to the King who sends him to the "Igor Recycling Plant". Schadenfreude tricks Eva into coming with him by having Jaclyn (again disguised as Heidi) pretend to kiss Igor.

At the fair, Schadenfreude manipulates Eva into striking him, activating her evil bone and turning her into a mindless killing machine. He unleashes the monster on the Science Fair where she destroys all the Evil Inventions whilst singing a rendition of "Tomorrow". Brain and Scamper help Igor escape from the plant and learn that Malbert had deliberately killed Malaria's crops with a weather ray that created the storm clouds so he could implement his "Evil Inventions" plan, thereby keeping himself in power. Rushing into the arena, Igor tries to reason with the enraged Eva while Brain and Scamper power down the weather ray. Eva roars furiously at Igor until the sunlight begins to shine once again on Malaria, which permanently deactivates her evil bone and returns her to her sweet and gentle self.

Igor exposes Malbert's lies to the public, telling them they do not need to be evil. The crowd boos at Malbert for his treachery before the damaged weather ray falls and crushes him to death. Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to take power, but Eva humiliates him. Malaria returns to its sunny peaceful ways with the monarchy dissolved and replaced with a republic with Igor as the president. Schadenfreude is reduced to a pickle salesman and Jaclyn, who's revealed to be a female Igor, loses her shapeshifting ability and becomes a pretzel saleswoman (while starting a relationship with Schadenfreude's Igor) while the annual science fair becomes an annual musical theatre showcase. Igor reveals his plan to build a dog to Eva, with her remarking that they'll just adopt if it doesn't work out. Igor and Eva live happily together as Malaria becomes a better place.