Thanks for checkout out our Igor review. If you’d like to watch a video version of the Igor review you can view it at the bottom of this post.
The world of 3D animated films is getting more and more crowded. There is still one undisputed king of the hill when it comes to 3D animated movies… and that’s clearly Pixar. I find myself having a hard time getting too excited about any animated film that doesn’t come from them these days (although as Kung Fu Panda demonstrated, there are exceptions).
On the surface, Igor looks like a poor mans version of a 3D animated film. Frankly from the trailer it looked more like a student film from one of those animation schools you see advertised on Spike late at night. But hey, it’s got John Cusack attached so how bad can it be right? Well…
THE GENERAL IDEA
The idea for Igor is actually a pretty creative one. In a country called “Malaria” the people were once happy and prosperous farmers until mysterious clouds covered the land leaving it in permanent darkness. To survive, the country changed industries from farming to evil mad science!!!! Now the celebrities are the best evil mad scientists… and in Malaria if you are born with a hunch back, your name is changed to “Igor” and you become assigned to an evil scientist as their stupid and slow witted assistant. However, one Igor (John Cusack) is actually quite brilliant and dreams of being recognized as the greatest mad scientist in the world… if he can get people to look past the fact that he’s an Igor.
THE GOOD
As mentioned above the basic premise of Igor was a very creative one. Not only is the idea a funny one, but it also introduces the themes of class and rising above your situation to achieve your goals (which is always nice). The concept of having a main character (Igor) who is such a good person, who just happens to aspire to be really evil was hilarious.
The character “Scamper” (voiced by Steve Buscemi) was fantastic. Scamper is a rabbit who also happens to be one of Igor’s first and most successful experiments. You see… Igor made Scamper immortal. The rub is that Scamper is a suicidal noir existentialist who is constantly trying to kill himself. That may sound really dark (I guess it is), but the results are hilarious.
It’s hard not to get attached to Igor. The character himself is the center of the charm of the film. He’s endearing, yet flawed and Cusack’s voice (even though I’m not a huge fan of movie stars doing voice work) seemed to nail who this little guy is.
Who knew blind orphans could be so funny?
THE BAD
How many times have we seen movies with a great starting idea… but then ultimately fall flat because of a weak story to flesh it out? Sadly, Igor is one of those movies. The movie really is just a premise filled in with mostly weak attempts at humor (aside from Scamper) and dumbed cliches.
The main “love interest” in the movie is Eva (not to be confused with Eve from Wall-E), who is to be Igor’s greatest creation. She’s basically Frankenstein with a twist… instead of turning out evil, she’s actually very “good” and thinks that she’s an actress. Sadly, it plays out just as stupid as it sounds.
I know Igor is just a kids movie, but if other kids movies can some up with viable conflicts, limit plot holes and build things towards a solid ending… why can’t this one?
Speaking of being a kids movie… there were a few moments in the film where I thought to myslef “If I were a parent here with my kid, I’d be uncomfortable with some of the stuff in this movie”. There is lots of talk about murder and death and suicide that may be a little too dark for having your 7 year old kid at.
OVERALL
Igor is a poor movie in most respects that ends up being palatable due to some solid charm and the humor brought by the Scamper character. Not a good movie… but one you may find yourself enjoying watching nonetheless. Overall I give Igor a 6 out of 10.
You can watch the video version of this Igor Review below:
I personally agree that letting your 5 year-old or younger would be a bad idea, but c’mon. Aren’t we being a little harsh? I looked at the reviews before the movie and was a little iffy on whether or not to see it with my friends.
All in all, i thought it was clever, creative, and had enough humor in it to have me quoting it the whole time in the car. My friends liked it, and i loved it.
I agree that this movie is in more the pre-teen, teen, area. But for this movie you need to be able to take a dark joke and have certain ranges of humor. Have an open mind! And, hey, everyone’s got opinions.
above all, everyone can do anything they wish to do anything, in law, so you can make up your mind. But it is your clear mind or other wrong ones. THANKS to see
we can not deny this is a commercial movie, likewise we could not deny that it has not made us laugh. These are only ruggedness or musty soul can make the smiles take far away from him when he was seeing Igor. Of course, this film need to be seen by adult soul, health, and special is his comprehension.
and if you have watched this, you would realize that it is true, instead for Blind Orphan. It seems to be unfair when the fate is too costive to take their windows of soul, but he gave them other, it is the extreme love. It could help people to over and over any invisible barrier to prevent us to close together.
just the strong and good soul can see this movie. Thus, the movie would give you so much lessons, one of that: these is evil inside human, but these are light at the center of any shadow, at last, these is only bright day.
Bad movie for Kids and to lame for adults so its a marketing misfit.
i DIDNT EVEN SEE THE MOVIE AND I THINK IT WAS THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE THE HUMOR WAS TERRIBLE AND DIDNT MAKE ANYONE LAUGH WE LEFT BEFORE IT STARTED
This film is awful, so much so I walked out of the cinema. The scene where they are taking it in turns to slap Igor is terrible. When she turns into evil was…. words fail me. My little boy was scared stiff and hence why I walked out…doubt he will go to sleep tonight.
Well. I was going to go and see this. But now im not, i’ll just watch it online somewhere for free
I agree, that from a parent’s perspective, the movie is much too dark for children. But as a teenager who has recently been re-watching Disney animated movies, I’m seeing that a lot of the things that were wrong about Disney flew over my head as a kid (and there were a LOT). Parents may think that their kid is imbibing scary new themes such as pill-popping and axe-murderers, but in reality, they don’t understand the intricacies of the subjects well enough to grasp what’s going on. To them, it’s still a funny little story of the underdog and his triumph in the end.
Speaking of the end (bad transition), did anybody else absolutely love the irony in blind little orphans singing “I Can See Clearly Now”? Maybe I’m just a horrible person with a horrible sense of humor.
I took my five year old son to see this movie…thinking it was a cute twist on the classic Frankenstein movie. But 20 minutes into the movie I was ready to leave.
I was VERY uncomfortable with him what was going on! The girlfriend pops pills so that she can change into a different person to be a girlfriend of all of the mad scientists so that she can steal their ideas (isn’t that like prostituting?) And she was being slapped around by her main mad scientist boyfriend left and right. That is NOT something I think we want our kids learning is ok.
It would have been a cute movie … the story line could have worked. But I think they tried too hard to combine a kids movie into something adults would “enjoy” too. It definitely failed! I certainly did not enjoy seeing it. We left after 20 minutes.
I would NOT recommend this for children. In fact I would not recommend this for anyone!
I wish I’d read your review before we took our son to see this. You’re right. Too dark and way too much adult humor. And bad language. But, yeah, you don’t expect a kid’s movie to be like that, so I didn’t research it first. Guess I learned my lesson. Fortunately he’s young enough that most of it just went over his head.
Generally it started off fine but after about the first five minutes in turned into another failed attempt at a comedy involving monsters and evil geniuses; Relatively, it turned out to be a cheap knock off of the classic movie Frankestein’s monster with a twist and it simply spiraled a downward lope into a poor excuse for a movie. It even had a few suggestive themes I don’t think children should see. I mean who in their right mind puts a suicidal bunny rabbit in a pg movie???????????? And who rated this movie in the first place? Either they cut out a lot of scenes in the making of the movie or it just plain bombed. On a scale of 1 to 10 of how good this movie was I’d rate it about a 3.
The movie was too subtle for its own good. It had a lot of themes being touched on but tried not to be obvious about them and in the end left a lot of viewers who didn’t pick up on it scratching their heads. It wasn’t just about the underdog overcoming evil so that good may triumph in the end and finding out that love is more than skin deep. It had things like political statements similar to 1984, social standings, etc…
It shouldn’t have surprised anyone that the movie turned out darker than it seemed. Animation movies are no longer solely targeted at children but also to the older teenagers and adults.
As I already said Gremlincode
Bugs Bunny is about a man with guns constantly looking to murder the main character
Shrek is about a monster seeking solitude in the swamps
The Wizard of Oz is about a “wicked witch” trying to kill the main character just to get her shoes
And yet, none of these get too dark. Igor is marketed and advertised as a funny spoof like parody on the Frankenstein story, but it ends up getting (at some points) much more grim and dark than it advertises itself to be.
Since the overwhelming vast majority of animated kid films have premises that COULD end up being dark but actually don’t end up going in that direction, it’s not “common sense” to assume that another film would, especially when it’s not advertised as such.
John:
The movie is essentially about Frakenstein….Frakenstein…you know, that book we read in highschool about a scientist that pieced dead tissue together and made an undead creature?
I don’t know, but that sounds just a littttttlllleee dark.
Soooo, if you think about that logically, do you think there might be the slightesttttt chance that a movie based off a dark book might be a little dark??
People that make movies don’t care if mommy and daddy think it’s too dark. They put it out there and leave it to the parents (and whatever common sense they may have) to decide whether or not it’s appropriate for their kid.
That’s where being a good parent comes into play.
I love how you people point the finger at the people who make the film when it’s actually your responsibility to check these things out first..
Hey Gremlincode,
You stupidly said:
“If you were that worried about your kid watching a dark film, next time do a little bit more research. Or maybe just develop some common sense..”
Yeah, how on earth could I possibly imagine that an animated comedy film aimed at little kids might NOT be too dark?!?! Wow, I really must not have any common sense huh?
The concept of a hunter in the woods with a loaded weapon looking to KILL the main character could seem “dark” on the surface too… but the Bugs Bunny cartoons seemed to avoid that didn’t it?
And on the note of parents freaking out about this movie being dark: ummm….duh?
At what point did you realize that? Was it before you saw hunchbacks and undead ceratures in the trailer, or what? It’s a Fall/Pre-Halloween film.
Duh..
If you were that worried about your kid watching a dark film, next time do a little bit more research. Or maybe just develop some common sense..
This was a good review, but I had a different opinion when I saw Igor.
It’s an animated movie for kids…These reviewers go into these films expecting Pixar masterpieces. There have been several 3D animated films that have been shot down because of this (Barnyard, Open Season, Happily Never After, the list goes on), and quite frankly it’s unfair.
Relax? It’s supposed to be fun…
I thought that Igor was funnier then hell. Where it was between the roaring of mad scientists, the suicidal Scamper character, or blind orphans singing “I Can See Clearly Now,” the movie completed its ultimate goal: to be funny and entertaining.
The artistic style of the film was amazing to look at. It was essentially Roman Dirge meets Tim Burton, with a Pixar flare. The characters were well-developed.
I do wish, however, that the movie would have been a bit longer.
But, in my opinion, 8/10. Take your kids, and go see it. It’s a fun time :)
AVOID this movie, both adults and especially children!! It is very DARK, and much talk about murder and suicide. There is also inappropriate language for any child.
I truly feel sorry for any adult who enjoyed this movie. I found no redeeming qualities of this movie.
This movie was EXTREMELY good (for preteens at least). The animation was a twist of classic horror movies and glorious Tim Burton-ness (it just sucks that in the end the sun comes up and everything looks too cute ans less gothic. I really suggest those of you who love Burton films and easygoing plots to follow to see this film. IT’S NOT FOR KIDS!! There are lots of dialogue about murder and macabre and even a part that Igor is chasing Brain/Brian around the forest with an ax, though it is used in a humorous way.
The only thing that I’m having trouble with is finding out what the song in the end is titles because I’m dying to have it on my ipod!
You’ve gooooot to be kidding. I watched Igor yesterday (I agree, the premise sounded pretty ok) and would probably give it a 0.5/10. The 0.5 for Scamper’s character only (FAIL FAIL FAIL for how terribly they carried it out and the empty dialogue they stuffed him with).
I could tell there were some underlying themes and symbols about sunshine, hypocrisy, Machiavellianism, inner beauty, etc etc…but all that did was give it a sheen of preachy on top of strangled plot and weak dialogue.
This was a really good movie!!! I loved the line “a bat stuck in the belfry”…A total Quasimodo moment!…Im so glad there’s finally another moive about a hunchback…Yay Hunchbacks!
Igor was a very clever movie. It should really appeal to kids in the 8 to 12 year old range. It is a classic story of good and evil and good wins. The characters, especially Scamper and Brian, had some hilarious lines. Although the film appears to be dark, it is quite uplifting. The blind ophans at the end made me laugh. It is a must see on the big screen.
I don’t wanna see it. No one in my school wants to see it. Even my eight year old sister wants to see it. NO ONE WANTS TO SEE IT!
Boy I feel bad for kids that actually want to see this.
Since I’m the animated fans it’s good to have a lot of animation movie right now. Of course, it would be the best if they could learn for the best on the field.
ok didn notice this was the REAL comeback of the 3min review, not ghost town. I wonder IGOR’s got the full package?