PREMISE
A coming of age love story about a teenager and her crush, who happens to be a corpse.
THE GOOD STUFF
KATHRYN NEWTON- I am not the foremost expert on what makes a star these days, but if consistency and charisma are important in any way whatsoever, then Kathryn Newton is a bonafide star. And people seem to either not know that yet, or they do not appreciate how good she always is. Big little lies, blockers, paranormal activity 4 (which was a dog s*** movie that she was great in) Pokemon detective Pikachu, the horror comedy freaky, Ant-Man and the wasp 3, and now this.
She has proven time and time again that she can elevate mediocre to bad films (such as this one). Got to give credit where credit is due… she carries every. Single. Scene. In. This. Movie. Her character ends up unlikable, not worth rooting for, and unfunny. And yet… Newton keeps it entertaining. She makes the chicken salad out of chicken s***.
THE BAD STUFF
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS- This is kind of a 50/50 complaint here. It’s not that the supporting characters are badly performed at all. Everybody here understands the assignment and performs the assignment well. But the assignment itself is not good. The assignment is to play second fiddle to the relationship of Lisa and Frankenstein. And though I understand why that is, that is kind of a problem. Literally all of the supporting characters and their relationships to Lisa and one other are way more interesting.
Liza Soberano is absolutely fantastic as her airheaded and charming-as-hell stepsister Taffy. The first act is almost dedicated to showing how different their lives are at home and at school and how much they love each other despite horrible abuse from Lisa’s stepmom. But unfortunately, this movie is not called “Lisa and her stepsister”.
(You Know, now that I think about it, a movie called Lisa and her stepsister is a totally Diablo Cody type of story to write no matter what genre it would happen to be. And it’s something she could write the hell out of. *Sigh* but I digress…)
THE UGLY STUFF
ALL THINGS FRANKENSTEIN- First things first. It is in no way a spoiler to tell you that this is a love story between Frankenstein and Lisa. The advertisements and especially the trailers have been screaming that to you.
That being said…God bless Cole Sprouse. I’m not too familiar with his work, and based on what he tries to do here he seems like he works very hard at his craft. But this movie wants him to convey a charming and romantic lead that shows up in the middle of the first act, with limited physical Frankenstein movements in the story up until the third act, playing multiple evolutions of the character throughout the film and who stays largely silent for the vast majority of the running time. It’s not an easy task by any means. Again, he is working as hard as he can, and again…God bless him. But under these circumstances, you would need the physical comedic gifts of a Jim Carrey/Robin Williams type of mother****** to elevate this movie past a certain point, and Cole Sprouse ain’t got that dog in him like that. It is Frankenstein that is the MAJOR critical flaw in this movie.
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Lisa Frankenstein is a movie that hits all of the check marks you expect it to hit. It does so in the exact ways you expected it to, all the while showing you all of the different ways it could have gone to make it way more interesting than what it is but chose not to. It’s a movie that has a major critical flaw and simply can’t overcome it. It’s entertaining up to a point before the heavily predictable stuff begins to happen.
LISA FRANKENSTEIN is in theaters now
