A Tim Burton wannabe you want to bury in the ground.
“Lisa Frankenstein” is a teen horror romcom that feels like it has been stitched together from parts of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Frankenstein,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Beetlejuice,” or “Jennifer’s Body,” and given a late 80s time period, some ticklish humor, and young stars like Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse (who was one of the twins oddly nicknaming their character Frankenstein in “Big Daddy”). And yet, it all seems silly, mean-spirited, and indulging to the genre.
Diablo Cody has written brilliant screenplays for movies like “Juno,” “Young Adult,” and even gained some cult film status with “Jennifer’s Body,” but she doesn’t balance the script or characters for “Lisa Frankenstein.” I kind of knew the film would be crappy, given today’s standards, especially since I hated a teen horror comedy called “Vampire Academy,” which was released a decade ago. And I’m glad they couldn’t fulfill a petition for a sequel.
Newton plays Lisa, a troubled young goth teen in 1989, whose mother was hacked to death, and whose father (Joe Chrest) marries the snooty Janet (Carla Gugino), whose daughter Taffy (Liza Soberano) even agrees with us that she’s a b*tch. She’s the kind of woman with the 50’s approach from the hairstyle to the green and pink house. And she’s the kind who hates Lisa and her interests. In fact, she’s the kind of woman Steve Carell’s jerky character should be dating in “The Way Way Back.”
Lisa also spends her time hanging at the graveyard where a handsome young man from the 1800s (Sprouse) is buried, and when lightning strikes, he comes to life. He appears all dirty and stinky (even his tears are odiferous), so he has to take a shower. And he has to try on night gowns, while hiding in her closet.
She’s doesn’t have romantic feelings for him, although he saves her from being institutionalized by murdering her stepmother. That snipe was supposed to be away on business trip, but she secretly stays behind to lock Lisa up. That’s basically why it would be easy for her father and stepsister to not worry about her whereabouts. Well, at least, until they try to call her, but to no avail.
Back to their would-be chemistry. They’re able to take off one of Janet’s ears, sew it on the corpse, and put him in a tanning bed to make it stick. And so, he and Lisa go on a PG-13 killing spree to fix him up with more body parts. The rating means there’s less gore and more comedy. At least that’s how the film likes to describe it. I mean how many times do we need to see when a man’s Johnson gets severed off? And I thought the “You shot me in the d*ck” joke was finished.
There are laughs from time to time, and they are wickedly cute, and Newton thrives on them. And I liked the way Soberano takes a break from the Wicked Stepsister cliche. But “Lisa Frankenstein” plays it too safe, and has to have a bad attitude about it. I can imagine we’re suggesting to the screenplay writers what should have been done, and they’re not taking our criticisms very well.
The movie may be directed by Zelda Williams, who is the daughter of the late Robin Williams, but that doesn’t mean “Lisa Frankenstein” is a comedy masterpiece. In fact, its humor comes to life, and then it dies again. It’s almost like that hair cream that “Wendell & Wild” used to resurrect the dead, but that stuff doesn’t last long.
