Psycho's Movie Reviews #241: Igor (2008)

Igor is a 2008 computer-animated horror comedy film directed by Tony Leondis from a screenplay by Chris McKenna. Igor, developed and produced by Max Howard with the California-based Exodus Film Group, was the first feature-length animated film to be financed with private equity. The animation was completed at France's Sparx Animation Studios and a facility in Vietnam. It was distributed in North America by MGM Distribution Co. and internationally by The Weinstein Company. It is MGM's first fully computer-animated film as well as the studio's first animated film in twelve years following 1996's All Dogs Go to Heaven 2.

Igor stars John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Jay Leno, Eddie Izzard, Sean Hayes, Arsenio Hall, Jennifer Coolidge, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, and Christian Slater. Conceived by McKenna as a twisting of evil scientist film tropes, Igor features Cusack as the titular Igor, who lives in the kingdom of Malaria where others of his kind serve as assistants to evil scientists. In trying to achieve his dream to become an evil scientist, Igor accidentally creates a sweet female monster named Eva.

Igor's first teaser trailer premiered at the 2008 New York Comic-Con before being released online on May 7, 2008. Promoted with a video game, toys, books, comic books, and fast-food tie-ins, Igor premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on September 13, 2008, before starting its American nationwide theatrical run five days later. The film received mixed reviews from film critics and grossed $30.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. Igor garnered an Annie Award nomination for Valérie Hadida's character design.

Plot

The Kingdom of Malaria was once a peaceful land of farmers until its environment was devastated by a mysterious storm that never ended and killed all of its plantation, thus driving its inhabitants into poverty. In response to this calamity, King Malbert (Jay Leno) initiated a plan to save the country by having the kingdom's best and most wicked scientists create various doomsday devices and blackmail the rest of the world into paying them by threatening to unleash these devices upon the world. As a result, Malaria became a dark country where evil reigned supreme. There is also an annual Evil Science Fair that takes place in an arena known as the Kiliseum, where the inventions fight one another while being broadcast to the rest of the planet. Also, while evil scientists are treated as celebrities, citizens with hunchbacks are treated as second-class, usually referred to by the derogatory name "Igor", and are often employed as lowly minions for these scientists.

One Igor (John Cusack), however, is a talented inventor who aspires to be an evil scientist himself. Among his inventions are his friends Scamper (Steve Buscemi), a re-animated, immortal and suicidal rabbit, and Brain (Sean Hayes), an unintelligent robot with a human brain transplanted into a life support jar. Unfortunately, he must to keep his talent a secret out of fear of being sent to the Igor recycling plant, especially from his master, the incompetent Doctor Glickenstein (John Cleese). Meanwhile, another evil scientist named Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) becomes immensely popular due to winning several Evil Science Fairs in a row. In truth, he always steals the prize-winner from another scientist before the fair with help of his shape-shifting girlfriend, Jaclyn (Jennifer Coolidge), and desires to overthrow King Malbert and rule Malaria as its new king.

One day, Glickenstein is visited by his "girlfriend" Heidi (who is actually Jaclyn in disguise attempting to steal his plans), giving Igor aspirations of romance. After throwing out Heidi, Glickenstein ignores Igor's concerns of using better parts for his latest invention, which is a rocket ship that malfunctions and explodes, taking Glickenstein with it. At this same moment, King Malbert arrives to see Glickenstein and demand that he build an invention that could defeat Schadenfreude, who Malbert fears will replace him as king due to his popularity. Unable to tell the truth of Glickenstein's death and seizing the opportunity, Igor boldly claims that Glickenstein is creating life, which greatly pleases Malbert, who proclaims that such an invention would make its creator the greatest evil scientist of all time. After the king leaves, Igor reveals to Scamper and Brain his project to create a huge and monstrous being from human remains.

With Brain and Scamper's help, he assembles the giant, and adds an "evil bone" that will make it pure evil. It first seems his experiment failed but seconds later, the monster, reveals to have been revived and later escapes. They later find the giantess in an orphanage playing with blind orphans. At the same time, Schadenfreude sneaks into Glickenstein's castle to steal his invention, but he not only discovers that Glickenstein is dead, but his Igor had created a living monster, which he believes will be his key to taking the throne.

Igor manages to lead the giant back to the castle with flowers that she likes. There, he discovers that the evil bone he gave her was not activated, making the monster sweet, friendly and gentle despite being hideous. Igor attempts to activate the evil bone by commanding the monster to kill a fly, but she instead catches it and sets it outside. Igor tries to convince the monster that she is evil but fails as the gentle giantess misinterpreted it as "Eva" (Molly Shannon) thinking that's the name he gave her. Igor later attempts to brainwash Eva into becoming evil by bringing her to a brainwashing salon. Brain also decides to get his brain cleaned and to watch TV but breaks the remote to his TV, so he takes the remote from Eva's room and, in an attempt to change the channel, inadvertently changes the monster's TV channel from a horror movie marathon to a talk show whose topic of the day is the history of acting. She ends up watching the talk show for several hours and upon leaving the salon, she can speak proper English and aspires to be an actress.

Igor then reluctantly takes his creation back to the castle in their car, bemoaning his failures. On the way back to the castle, Schadenfreude chases after Igor attempts to steal Eva by using a shrink ray, only to fail and end up shrinking himself. Igor and his friends nearly go over a cliff, but Eva saves them all, showing her appreciation of all life. Brain then brags on about how he changed the channel for Eva's TV, thus admitting that he made her what she is. Upon learning this, Igor attempts to kill Brain with an axe in anger for ruining his monster. When Eva questions this, Scamper sarcastically tells her they're practicing for a play and the monster believes that they're performers. Igor then gets the idea to exhibit Eva at the science fair while lying to her that the fair is an "Annie" audition with a few differences. While helping Eva with the “play”, Igor slowly starts to fall for his monster, who tries to convince her creator that its always better to be good than evil, no matter how much more successful evil is.

Dr. Schadenfreude takes Igor to his home and attempts to blackmail him into giving him Eva by threatening to reveal Glickenstein's doom to King Malbert. Igor escapes, but is too late to stop Schadenfreude from exposing Igor to the King who sends him to an "Igor Recycling Plant". Schadenfreude tricks Eva into coming with him by having Heidi (Glickenstein's "girlfriend" who is revealed to be Jaclyn in disguise) pretend to kiss Igor.

At the fair, Schadenfreude once again manipulates Eva into striking him, activating her evil bone and turning her into a mindless killing machine. He unleashes the monster on the Science Fair where she destroys all the Evil Inventions whilst singing Annie's "Tomorrow". Brain and Scamper help Igor escape from the plant and learn that Malbert had deliberately killed Malaria's crops with a weather ray that created the storm clouds so he could implement his "Evil Inventions" plan, thereby keeping himself in power. Rushing into the arena, Igor tries to reason with the enraged Eva while Brain and Scamper power down the weather ray. Eva roars furiously at Igor until the sunlight begins to shine once again on Malaria, which permanently deactivates her evil bone and returning to her sweet and gentle self.

The crowd boos at Malbert for his treachery before the damaged weather ray falls and crushes him to death. Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to take power, but Eva humiliates him. The monarchy has been dissolved and Malaria becomes a republic with Igor as the president. Schadenfreude is then relegated to pickle salesman and for Jaclyn, who's revealed to be a female Igor, a pretzel saleswoman (while she begins to have feelings for Schadenfreude's Igor) while the annual science fair becomes an annual musical theatre showcase. Igor reveals his plan to build a dog to Eva, with the giantess remarking that they'll just adopt if it doesn't work out. Igor and Eva live happily together as Malaria becomes a better place.

Production

Development

While attending the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, Chris McKenna's interest in Transylvania-inspired settings caused him to conceive an evil scientist film like Frankenstein (1931) that has all of its common tropes twisted; the hunchback is smart instead of dumb, the scientist's creation is friendly instead of monstrous, the evil scientist isn't intelligent, and the jar brain is stupid. In the 2000s, the increasing amount of cheap technology led smaller, independent companies to produce films in the animation industry; one of them was Exodus, where its film Igor was the first feature-length animation to be budgeted entirely with private equity. McKenna pitched his idea to the California-based Exodus Film Group as a three-paper treatment, instead of as a presentation of drawings and concept art usual for pitching animated features; the company accepted and instructed investors worldwide to finance the film. According to Exodus president John D. Eraklis, "We chose it because it was the most original concept that we had come across in years and Chris McKenna is a brilliant writer."

The Exodus project was first announced on September 7, 2004, with the involvements of McKenna, executive producer Max Howard, and 50 to 75 animators from the studio ElectroAge revealed. Exodus was developing the film as part of a $50 million fund that also included The Hero of Colour City and Amarillo Armadillo; Igor made up a chunk of the fund, being budgeted at $30 million. The original plan was to produce a short film, titled Igor: Unholy Frijoles, that would get the producers comfortable with making a feature-length film and serve as a launch for a longer version of Igor to be released in 2007. The seven-minute short was also going to premiere in festivals before being distributed.

In a November 2005 interview, Howard announced that the rigging and voice recording for the short was completed and that storyboards were nearly finished for the animation to start soon; he also shared about the film's content, "This is a slightly edgier picture we're dealing with. We're taking a tongue-in-cheek look at the horror genre, in particular, Frankenstein stories but taken from Igor's point of view. There's sort of an underclass were you're born an Igor and you can only aspire to be an Igor, but, of course, he has greater aspirations than that. It's not supposed to be scary, but there's a gross-out value, which we hope kids will really enjoy. We're not making a soft, preschool property either." In early 2006, in addition to making ways into festivals, DVDs of Igor: Unholy Frijoles were being sold by Exodus to those who invested a minimum of $30,000 in the feature film's budget; in documents, Exodus enticed investors by citing a 2004 Dove Foundation study regarding the superior amount of profitability of G-rated films over R-rated motion pictures.

On September 22, 2006, it was revealed Tony Leondis would direct the feature. He got onboard due to sharing McKenna's interest in horror films and sardonic sense of humour, in addition to being intro film noir and German Expressionism works; Leondis helped the writer in developing the setting's backstory, a more complicated process than McKenna predicted that required collaboration from not just the director but also the actors and producers. Leondis explained, "My goal was to take familiar monster motifs and rearrange them in a surprisingly fun way to evoke the memories that people have of classic monster movies. Something familiar enough to connect to, but at the same time fresh and unexpected so that it became a fun ride – and maybe makes them think a little along the way."

Casting

As Howard described casting A-list actors for the film, "We sent them the script. Steve Buscemi signed on very early, and he's an 'actor's actor.' Then others signed on... it just took off that way." On March 4, 2005, Slater joined the cast to play the title character in the short film, and Fil Barlow to direct. On July 19, 2005, Buscemi, Cleese, and Leno entered the cast as the characters Scamper, Dr. Glickenstein, and Brian the Brain. Jeremy Piven and Molly Shannon, Leondis' first decision for Eva, were cast for the roles of Dr. Schadenfreude and Eva respectively on October 19, 2006. On January 10, 2007 Jennifer Coolidge joined the cast to play Jaclyn and Heidi, and Leno switched from voicing Brain to King Malbert. On March 28, 2007, John Cusack replaced Slater in the role of Igor, and Hayes joined to voice Brain; the release date was also set for October 24, 2008. Leondis thought Cusack had a "world-weary, but hopeful" tone to his voice perfect for Igor's character arc. On May 11, 2007, Arsenio Hall was revealed to be in the cast. On July 26, 2007, Eddie Izard replaced Piven for the role of Dr. Schadenfreude. Izard came up with his own accent for Schadenfreude.

Visuals

Igor was produced over the course of two years beginning in November 2006. Due to Igor's inspiration originating from a European nation and being most famous in the continent of Europe, Howard wanted to have a European studio responsible for the animation's aesthetic. He chose Sparx Animation Studios, where its French office did the designs and used $4 million worth of tech for making the film. It was Sparx's first theatrical film, as their previous work were direct-to-video products and television productions such as Rolie Polie Olie (1998–2004) and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas (2004). A chunk of the 65 Sparx artists and Leondis previously worked at Walt Disney Animation France, and appreciated the amount of freedom they had when working on Igor. Leondis explained, "At Disney everything had to be done in the house style, but here they really wanted to push boundaries. I came in and said, 'We're going to do something sumptuous, something sophisticated, something crazy. We're going to mix freaks, skulls and the generally creepy with the architecture of the Liberace museum.'" Igor was the last production of Sparx before it shut down its French offices a few months after the film's release.

Design and Art Style

Igor's first six months with Sparx involved the French facility conceiving the visual style. For the film's 120 characters, 65 locations, and 250 props, Leondis wanted them to be asymmetrical, a decision coming from the film's backstory about a farm land taken over by castles with technology: "I wanted the in-organic shapes to not exactly fit, to be thrust upon our peaceful organic world."

In order to achieve both a film noir and an accessible-while-creepy aesthetic, Leondis and the art director he worked with, Olivier Besson, incorporated a fair amount of mist and smoke.[16] Leondis also went for an art style inspired by the fashion works of Vivienne Westwood, where it takes elements from a variety of time periods; he summarized the setting's look as a mixture of the middle ages, the industrial revolution, and "Pop sixties." The visual's lighting and shading took cues from the works of Rembrandt. Other influences Leondis used on the look included Brassaï's use of black-and-white and Mary Blair's colour style. Leondis stated regarding the colouring, "Olivier Besson would use an unrealistic colour like pink for the sky if the emotional moment called for it — and somehow still made it feel like our world."

In Howard's words, the animators went for a "puppet sensibility" in the characters' movements and designs, a decision inspired by the 1967 stop motion film Mad Monster Party? (1967). McKenna explained, "the most difficult challenge with Igor was going to be portraying him as a hunchback without making him freakish." The titular protagonist of Igor wasn't a prisoner per se, but character designer Valérie Hadida nonetheless gave his attire prison sensibilities to symbolize him being jailed in the land he lives in; the back of his "straitjacket" has a prison uniform pattern, and the cuffs on his hands indicate handcuffs. Hadida was later nominated for an Annie Award for Character Design in an Animated Feature Production for her work on Igor. Two patches of orange are also on Igor's back to suggest hope before Eva enters the world, who is colored a warm yellow to symbolize her adding "hope and light" to the land.

Animation

The animation of Sparx's designs were outsourced to a facility in Ho Chi Minh City that consisted of 150 animators and only worked in television advertisements. Since none of the Vietnamese animators could speak English, Leondis recorded videotapes of himself doing character movements and the voice actors doing their lines; and the Vietnamese workers would animate the characters with the tapes as references. According to Howard, "It was a real buzz to go out there and see our artwork come to life on their monitors. It's a subtle film, but they got it." Igor was computer-animated with Autodesk Maya in less than 18 months.

The set up of the tools and workflow for animating the film went on the same six months the designs were being conceived; the Paris office modelled and rigged the characters, and the Vietnamese space modelled the props and sets. A 3D animatic was done in the next four months by six animators and two camera people, with two-and-a-half of those months involving revisions of the animatic. The following six months, 50 of the Vietnamese workers animated the film before it was taken to the Paris office for the lighting and final compositing to be done with Digital Fusion. According to Sparx manager Jean-Philippe Again, each animator completed an average of 0.6 seconds of animation. Rending was done with another Autodesk program, Mental Ray; and the company actually trained Sparx in rendering more efficiently for the first half of production. Since Sparx was in a partnership with HP Inc., hardware by the technology company was used for Igor.

Music

Leondis first met Patrick Doyle, one of his favourite film composers, about Igor in October 2007; Leondis showed Doyle the film without music as well as concept drawings, which got the composer "immediately excited." Due to having themes for different types of characters, Igor's score incorporates multiple styles, such as piano concerto for Eva's theme and a tango tinge for Dr. Schadenfreude's dance-y side. Leondis instructed Doyle to give the score a "slightly eastern feel," offering him the works of composers such as Bela Bartok to reference from. The score's Gothic elements were executed through a set of Choir samples. The soundtrack also includes five Louis Prima songs. The soundtrack was released on September 30, 2008 by Varèse Sarabande. "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield was featured in the film's end credits, but not included on the soundtrack.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The Weinstein Company bought the North American rights to Igor on February 1, 2006. However, differences towards the artistic vision and release idea of the film between Weinstein and Exodus led Weinstein to sell the North American rights back to Exodus. However, Weinstein was involved in international distribution, and when selling Igor at the 2006 Marché du Film before production started, companies from almost every territory bought it; according to Howard, "We pre-sold [the film] to all the former east bloc countries pretty much on the name alone."

As of January 13, 2008, the release date was set at October 17, 2008. The Weinstein Company ran an Igor panel at the 2008 New York Comic-Con, where, in addition to being an exclusive premiere of the first trailer, McKenna and Leondis presented details about the film. At the panel, Leondis also announced the contest Be an Igor, where voice actors contributed video recordings of themselves acting like an Igor for their voices to be used for extras; the top-five results were included as extras for the film's DVD.

Igor's first poster, made entirely by Leondis, was released by Weinstein on April 23, 2008; and the first trailer premiered online via AniMagTV with a high definition video released on Yahoo! on May 8, 2008. A presentation for Igor took place at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where Harvey Weinstein, McKenna, and Slater attended. On August 28, 2008, Exodus partnered with Marlaria.com and the Against Malaria Foundation for Igor to be a spokesperson for donating to end the Malaria crisis.

On September 15, 2008, Collider revealed another trailer and seven clips of Igor.

Alex Billington, also covering the trailer, predicted Igor might be good thanks to its cast, but may do mediocrely at the box office, citing the performance of a previous English-language animated film released in 2006 and made in France. I Watch Stuff was turned off by the "archetypical Disney-esque jokes and characters" presented in the trailer, also mocking Igor's design as "a hunchbacked David Gest." Peter Sciretta also had little faith in the film's quality due to Weinstein's poor reputation with animated films, but Kryten Syxx wrote that "there's enough in the trailer to please horror fans" as well as children, Ryan Parsons suggested that Igor "looks charming enough" to compete with bigger productions from Pixar and Dreamworks, and Cartoon Brew thought it looked "intriguing" judging by the trailer.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released Igor theatrically in the United States on September 19, 2008 to 2,300 theatres, more than "1,200 to 1,500 screens" the producers predicted.

According to Gitesh Pandya, "pre-release expectations were low since it is not based on any popular brand name property." However, he projected an opening weekend gross of $8 million due to no competition with other family films and "a marketing push highlighting how Halloween comes early this year thanks to this monster mash." He also suggested the film would drop only modestly in later weeks.

In its opening weekend the film grossed $7,803,347, ranking #4 at the box office alongside Lakeview Terrace, Burn After Reading and My Best Friend's Girl. As of December 2019, Igor has the 184th biggest opening weekend in a September month. The film then grossed $19,528,602 domestically and $11,218,902 overseas for a worldwide total of $30,747,504. In the UK, the film opened on 32 screens with a gross of £56,177 for a screen average of £1,756 and placing it at No. 20 in the box office chart. The mainstream release opened on October 17 at 418 screens and made £981,750 with a screen average of £2,348. This placed it at No. 3 for that weekend. The UK total gross is £1,110,859.

Noel Murray analysed Igor had a difficult time selling tickets due to being "too macabre for young children and too cutesy for hip adult moviegoers," and Adam Quigley reported it was "instantly forgotten following its release."

Budget $25 million

Box office $30.7 million

My Review

Getting set to meet a friend who is a fan of animation before Christmas, I started looking for a title we could both watch. Having made a note on the title for a few years (!) due to it appearing to be a cartoon Horror which has weirdly been forgotten, it felt like the best time to at last meet Igor.

Displaying a confidence in his writing debut (with additional material from John Hoffman/Dimitri Toscas and director Tony Leondis) of playing around with genre staples which would work wonders with Jumanji 2 and in the MCU, the screenplay by Chris McKenna moves pass the big-name monsters in order to follow the daily grind of the lab assistants and evil henchmen such as Igor, who have dreams of becoming mad scientists themselves, but always get stuck following the demands of their masters. Dipping into off-beat Horror Comedy with a talking brain and a suicidal immortal rabbit, McKenna gives the movie dollops of heart via Igor's Frankenstin's Monster-style creation Eva learning that she does not have to sit in the pigeon-hole others attempt to place Eva in.

Brimming with enthusiasm in the detailed audio commentary with McKenna and producer Max Howard, Director Tony Leondis shows a real promise here, which has sadly not continued (his next project was 2017's The Emoji Movie.) Looking back to the Gothic Horror films of the 1930's, Leondis gives his monsters an excellent grotesque appearance, with the smoothly-handled CGI animation not taking the rough edges off the put together with odds and ends, fading into a metallic grey, character designs. Joined by a dead-pan Steve Buscemi as Scamper and an adorable Molly Shannon as Eva, John Cusack gives a great worn-down turn, as loyal henchman Igor.

I rather enjoyed this animation, it may not be up there with the works of Disney, Pixar or Ghibli but it is a lot of fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. Our protagonist, voiced by John Cusack, is a good lead and his sidekicks Scamper and Brain are rather fun. The story doesn't go anywhere too surprising but that isn't a problem; films aimed at younger viewers can't be too convoluted. There are some scares but these are all child-friendly and never last long. There are quite a few laughs to be had; most provided by the sidekicks. The character design is fun, although some viewers may wonder if one female character needs to show off so much cleavage! The voice cast, which includes several well-known actors with distinctive voices does a fine job bringing the characters to life. Overall I'd say that while this will never be considered a classic it is rather fun and well worth watching if you are an animation fan looking for something a little, but not too dark.

{And literally just now I've realised/found out that Christian Slater is in the film. I mean I can forgive myself for not realising because it was a sort of smaller role than the rest of the characters, but still looking back I should of realised that it was him during the re-watch}

There will be some who love Igor, and some who don't. I liked it, I have seen better animated films, but I have seen worse as well. The plot, despite a very intriguing concept, is rather formulaic and the film drags at times, but a lot compensates for any misgivings. There may be some who'd think Igor is too dark, I can understand, but I happened to like the dark tone the film sometimes had, it reminded me a little bit of the Gothic charm you'd find in a Tim Burton film. The animation is absolutely great, very bold and colourful while keeping to Igor's overall atmosphere, and the characters are quirky with an endearing protagonist and Scamper is very funny and devious. I also liked the ghoulish jokes and gags, and the film is smartly written generally. The vocal cast I can't fault either, John Cusack and John Cleese are both very likable, Molly Shannon like her character is very sweet-natured and Jennifer Coolidge's Heidi is hilarious, but Steve Buscemi as Scamper steals the show. Overall, a good film, not a great one but I don't consider it bad either. 7.2/10