"Igor" (2008) - Movie Review

I have done something terrible which I never did since I started blogging for film reviews. I missed the first ten minutes of “Igor” and hence whatever the perspective I will be sharing will be for the remaining eighty six minutes of the film which is sad because it is a sweet little film targeting the kids and is a fun little trip for the adults who will be accompanying them. With John Cusack voicing the titular character, this is the animated feature which coasts on the line of being cheesy and acts mature in kid’s way to make it perfect for children.

In the darkened world of Malaria is ruled by King Malbert (voice of Jay Leno) preaching evil as the tool for harmony and better life. To celebrate that philosophy he arranges a yearly evil science fair wherein he himself nominates a scientist from his administration to take part. The goal is the battle of the evil invention robots and creatures done by these scientists. In this evil scheming life style as you know have no scarcity for machinating seeking people. One such is Dr. Schadenfreude (voice of Eddie Izzard) stealing ideas from scientists to win the recent past fairs with success. He has a side kick lady (voice of Jennifer Coolidge) who with the aid of different pills transforms to multiple appearances and intrudes the scientist’s den to extract intelligence.

The King’s scientist has the assistant Igor who has no one to consider him as a person that he creates two inventions namely “Brain” (voice of Sean Hayes) and “Scamper”(voice of Steve Buscemi). They are his buddies and he aspires to be a great “evil” scientist himself one day. Situation comes in place wherein his boss is blown off during a dangerous experiment leaving him to do his dream. He builds a monstrous woman who is supposed to be this mistress of evil. Well, it does not turn as it supposed to.

The nice thing about “Igor” is the duration of the film it limits and how it operates swiftly. Nothing is too surprising and too predictable. Everything becomes and happens without many hassles. When “Eva” the monster woman comes out incommunicado and nicety as her propaganda, the land of Malaria has process for faster and better evil quality, an evil brain wash. And the writer Chris McKenna and director Anthony Leondis smartly puts a little homage to Stanley Kubrick’s viciously twisted “A Clockwork Orange” experiment in it. But alas Brain/Brian accidentally changes the channel to James Lipton’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio” and emerges Eva as an aspiring actress. Nothing scary than that isn’t it?

I guess the greatest winning factor for “Igor” is its simplicity. Its pastoral nature in an uncomplicated screenplay and characters not too sugary and not too dark either. The concept of having a land of evil being the source for survival makes it hard to ride on the plausibility of certain characters to be the way they are but that is the sweetness of them. Some of us are just too naïve to ourselves in telling something who we are not really. It is that character of an open honesty in planning negative attitudes and plans for these innocent Igor and his sidekicks which make it smiley fun.

In this dry land of voluminous films of quality comes “Igor” a small and calculatedly smart presentation of kids. It does not have the marketing strategy of “Wall-E” and it does not stand equal to it either but to its teeny tiny miniscule world of wonderland it takes little steps aware of its capability. In doing so they set a short story with a curt screenplay to have a good fun time along with the kids. (And if you think I have used the “evil” so many times in this review, see the film and then decide who used the word less)