#8, I FRANKENSTEIN

#8 I, FRON-KEN- STEEN

Aaron Eckhart, Bill Knightey,Yvonne Strahovski and Miranda Otto.

Written by Kevin Grevioux, Stuart Beattie. Directed by Stuart Beattie.

93 minutes or 5580 seconds of your life you'll never get back.

I just made a starling discovery on IMDB. It turns out that this film had not one but two writers! Blimey I was surprised, I'd genuinely assumed the whole sorry mess, CG animation included had just been improvised on the spot.

When I first saw this trailer to this film I hated it. And felt the same way right up till the early reviews started coming in then my interest got piqued. It was being hailed as: so-bad-it-was-funny, as a huge ridiculous romp and I thought, 'sod it, that sounds like fun! Let's give it a go.' Plus it's from the crew what made the Underworld films and I quite liked two of those, out of the four I saw.

I wish I'd followed my gut instinct.

Well, let me save you 93 minutes of your life, this just isn't worth it. Apart from Aaron and Bill, who both being very rum-sorts, give it their all this is just a utterly pointless, lazy and stupid film that's too serious and up it's own arse for its own good, when what was needed was a sense of its own silliness and a sense of humour. Sadly it has neither.

It takes place in Paris, a Paris utterly devoid of life, several of the fights happen in, around, under, above and next door to Notre Dame Cathedral and yet never is seen a single other living person, similarly none of the building that face the vast Gothic edifice ever have their lights on. And seemingly, the wanton destruction caused to the building and stain glass windows goes un-noticed.

The plot, for there is one, concerns an ages-old war waged between demons, there are 666 of them and some gargoyles sent by angels to fight the demons, a secret war unseen by humans. When a demon dies he goes to hell when a gargoyle croaks he goes upstairs. Luckily demons are insanely easy to kill, mainly based on their numbers and the Gargoyles are just shit.

Old Fron-Ken-Stein, given the name Adam by the queen of the Gargoyles is hunted by the demons for some nefarious purpose (it's to animate an army of corpses), Bill is the king of the demons. So the film consists of Frankie, killing demons, getting beaten up by Gargoyles, getting captured by Gargoyles, escaping, killing demons and getting beaten up by demons and gargoyles. All the while guarding Frankenstein's Journal which details how the mad old bastard reanimated life, it's the book that Bill and his gang want, obvs.

It occured to me right at the beginning of this film that if, when the Gargoyle first found the journal, they'd just burned it on the spot then the film could have ended right there and I could have gone off to see something else. Sadly they didn't and I stayed to the bitter end, and boy was I bitter at the end.

I wish critics would just be honest and say: this film is shit, it's not funny because it's shit, it's just shit. It's not worth Aaron Ackhart's time, it's not worth Bill Knightey and it's certainly not worth yours. My time it is, because I'm on a quest to find the shittest film of the year. So I deserve whatever I sit through.

This is just a dreary, quite dull and bland slug fest which doesn't even have Kate Beckinsale's lovely leather clad bottom to entice me.


3/10

I saw it so you don't have to. Don't make my sacrifice a vain one.