Hollywood never has any new ideas. This is a given. The problem is when Hollywood has two kind of similar ideas at the same time.
So it is with “ParaNorman” and “Frankenweenie”. “ParaNorman” comes courtesy of the animation studio that brought us “Coraline”, and has an Aardman-trained director behind it. “Frankenweenie”, meanwhile, is Tim Burton finally getting to make the movie at Disney that got him fired the first time around.
Yes, they’re both horror-themed stop-motion cartoons, although they’re not coming out head-to-head for once, and at least they’re concerned with different parts of the dead.
Don’t get us wrong, we’re seeing both. But we were wondering…which will be better. We’ve got trailers, and breakdowns, on the next two slides.
Anybody who’s had a dog die or owns a dog is probably showing up to this movie. Just simply because, dammit, it hurts. OK, so he’s violating the laws of God and man. Can you blame the kid?
And we have to admit, the “Frankenstein” references (which are all over the place, right down to re-enacting a few shots from the movie) make us cackle, not to mention the hilarious perversity of the whole thing. We’re just worried that the design is sort of “samey”; our first reaction to seeing that kid was “What’s Johnny Depp’s character from “The Corpse Bride” doing here?”.
What worries us about this is the latest trailer seems to want to cover up the gleefully scary nature of this movie. By early accounts, it’s not just “The Frighteners” except in stop motion: this has some genuinely scary moments to it that we hope Focus doesn’t cut out.
And we’ve got to admit, we’re leaning a bit towards this one being better. The horror references are fairly amusing, and not aimed at kids (although we’ve got to retire the “cell-phone-ring-as-pop-culture-reference” gag).
So…what do you think? Which will be better?
image courtesy Disney
