Lisa Frankenstein – Excessive comedy at the expense of thrills 

Mary Shelley’s vintage 1818 novel ‘Frankenstein’ gets a campy, melodramatic 80’s re-imagining fraught with teased hair, an overdose of fishnet, plenty of blood splatter, and some killer tunes from that era… pun intended. 

 It became evident early on in this movie that the groovy 80s soundtrack may just be the best thing about the film, which features cartoonish and often times lame eye-rolling antics. There are glimpses of intelligent dialogue, dramatic irony, double entendres, and lewd comedy peppered into the script, but they simply were not enough to right this ship. 

Trailblazing production ‘Stranger Things’ cracked the 80’s horror theme with that riveting level of suspense while using comedy for momentary reprieve, whereas writer Diablo Cody missed that mark for me here with too many attempts at laughter. 

 The cute performance from Kathryn Newton.. she’s adorable and certainly pulls off the 80s ‘Trad Goth’ look like a young Madonna… I’m excited to see how she performs in her new Zack Galifianakis film ‘Winner’ coming out this year.  

Lisa Frankenstein was all-in-all a bit of a yawn-fest for me, though there were a lot of people laughing in the cinema consistently… 

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