Special Features
DVD Corner: Igor
Rebekah Hendershot |
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 Igor is 87 minutes of movie in search of a joke.
The premise is amusing, if not terribly original. All hunchbacks in the kingdom of Malaria must become Igors and assist the mad scientists who form the country’s major economic engine. Igors themselves are not allowed to invent anything. When a certain mad scientist (voiced by John Cleese) unexpectedly kicks the bucket, his Igor (John Cusack) gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance to enter his evil invention in the annual Evil Science Fair. The fact that said invention is a 15-foot-tall patchwork woman (voice of Molly Shannon) who really wants to be a movie star is, of course, a minor obstacle.
No, it doesn’t really get any funnier than that.
Okay, Igor has its moments. If you’ve ever had someone drive you berserk by repeatedly singing the “Tomorrow” song from Annie, you will be pleased to hear Franken-girl belting it out while smashing killer robots; it’s probably the best performance of that song ever. And a few of Igor’s earlier inventions--notably, Steve Buscemi as a suicidal rabbit whom Igor made immortal (and who keeps reattempting suicide)--provide snickers. There’s also something gleefully over-the-top about a monster rampaging toward a home for blind orphans: not just orphans, not just blind kids, but full-on blind orphans!
But really, it doesn’t fill 87 minutes. Ten minutes, tops.
 Under writer Chris McKenna and director Anthony Leondis, the remaining 77 minutes are taken up with unfunny and uninteresting business. Eddie Izzard is uninspired as evil poseur Dr. Schadenfreude, who can’t even muster a good “throw the switch!” with any gusto. Jennifer Coolidge is just plain dull as his shape-shifting girlfriend, who predictably goes by the names Jaclyn and Heidi. Sean Hayes doesn’t get very far as Igor’s other sidekick, an incurably stupid brain in a jar. Really--that’s the gag. A brain with no brain. Ba-dum-ching!
Not helping much are the character designs and animation provided by Exodus. Imagine a steampunk twist on The Nightmare Before Christmas done in the kind of shiny plastic modeling last seen in The Incredibles…but with none of the whimsy that combination suggests. After the first 20 minutes, all the wooden faces and rubbery clothing start to blur together. The muddy lighting goes beyond conveying the perpetually stormy Malaria and makes the action dull looking and hard to follow. And after a while you forget to ignore Igor’s resemblance to a poorly rendered 3-D version of Disney’s Quasimodo, down to the stringy hair and almond-shaped eyes.
 The humor in Igor is so focused on the monster’s desire to be an actress--and on using every tired Hollywood in-joke in the book--that it never bothers to polish any other gags. So Schadenfreude is dull and repetitive, Igor is relentlessly positive (about evil, which is not as interesting as that sounds) and the two major female characters are walking clichés: the vamp and the would-be diva. The film’s moral is as heavy-handed as a 15-foot-tall monster who wants to play Little Orphan Annie, and its delivery is just about as subtle. Even Arsenio Hall’s invisible announcer and Jay Leno’s disappointing turn as the weaselly King Malbert, organizer of the mad-science event, can’t save this clunker.
The single-disc DVD (MGM Home Entertainment, MSRP: $29.99) compounds the problems of a movie going in not enough directions at once. It contains the widescreen version of the film on one side and the full-screen version on the other, thus guaranteeing that one version of the movie will be scratched and unwatchable by the time you’re finished mauling open the packaging. The double-sided disc suggests the film is focused on the kid market, which is probably the only demographic forgiving enough to enjoy Igor.
 The special features, meanwhile, are as sparse as the movie. There are no making-of docs here, no extra little films to watch. There is an audio commentary by Leondis, McKenna and producer Max Howard that hits all the standard points. There is an alternate opening scene that was probably cut for being an outright theft of the opening of The Incredibles, down to the grainy newsreel and crackling announcer. (This begs another, unrelated question: Why newsreels? Almost no one watching movies anymore is old enough to remember them, so why do kids’ movies, in particular, go to such lengths to parody them?) Aside from pointing out which parts were cannibalized to make the opening of the final film, there’s very little of interest here. The rest of the features menu is taken up with concept art galleries (figure models and posters that suggest a sudden and ill-considered shift in the movie’s concept) and a few trailers.
The trailers may be the most depressing part of the disc. MGM didn’t bother to include any ads for upcoming high-profile releases, apparently thinking Igor is not worthwhile. There are only a couple of ads for dull-looking and badly animated cartoons. As the mad scientists say, sometimes you just don’t have that spark.
Igor is now available on DVD.
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