Igor (film)

Plot

The Kingdom of Malaria's environment is devastated by a mysterious storm. Its king, Malbert, then blackmails the rest of the world to pay the town not to unleash the various doomsday devices invented by its Evil Scientists. They in turn are assisted by Igors, while the kingdom's annual Evil Science Fair showcases the scientists' latest weapons. One Igor, however, who serves the somewhat tedious-minded Doctor Glickenstein, is a talented inventor who aspires to be an Evil Scientist himself. Among his inventions are his friends "Scamper," a re-animated, immortal rabbit with a death wish and "Brain," a unintelligent human brain transplanted into a life support jar.

When the malfunctioning invention explodes and decimates Glickenstein, Igor sees his chance. With Brain and Scamper's help, he assembles a huge, monstrous being from human remains. When he brings her to life, however, he discovers that the "Evil Bone" he gave her was not activated, making her kind, friendly and feminine. Igor tries to convince her that she is evil, inadvertently naming her "Eva."

Igor attempts to brainwash Eva into becoming evil by bringing her to a brainwashing salon where people are hooked into a machine and shown monster movies for a few hours. Brain also gets the same thing in order to watch TV, but he has taken the remote for Eva's room and every time he tries to change the channel the TV in Eva's room changes. She therefore watches the movie Annie for several hours, so when Eva gets out she can speak English and wants to be an actress. Igor then takes her back to the castle to be destroyed in the car. On the way back to the castle, Igor's nemesis Dr. Schadenfreude and Jackie try to steal Eva by using a shrink ray to shrink them all, but are instead struck by the ray themselves. Igor decides to exhibit Eva at the science fair anyway, telling her that the fair is an "Annie" audition.

Dr. Schadenfreude learns of Eva's existence and attempts to steal her. When that fails, he exposes Igor to King Malbert, who promptly sends Igor to an "Igor Recycling Plant." Schadenfreude activates Eva's Evil Bone and unleashes her on the Science Fair, where she destroys all the Evil Inventions. Scamper and Brain help Igor escape from the Igor Recycling Plant and they learn that Malbert had deliberately killed Malaria's crops with a weather ray that made storm clouds so he could implement his "Evil Inventions" plan, thereby keeping himself in power. Rushing into the arena, Igor reasons with Eva to deactivate her Evil Bone and allowing her to regain her sweet personality, while Scamper and Brain deactivate the weather ray, which falls and crushes Malbert to death.

Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to take power, but the citizens revolt upon learning of Malbert's deception. Jackie sees that her voice is cracking, so she tries to get another pill but finds she's all out. As Jackie's voice becomes more and more cracked, she transforms into a female Igor. The monarchy has been dissolved and Malaria becomes a republic, with Igor as president. Schadenfreude is relegated to pickle salesman, while the annual Science Fair becomes an annual musical theater showcase. Igor and Eva are planning on making a dog, or adopting one.

Cast

Production

It is the first animated feature film produced by Exodus Film Group and the French CGI animation studio, Sparx*. The film was split between the studio’s Paris and Vietnam facilities. The Damas proprietary software was used to manage the digital assets and the production workflows of both sites, in an interconnected manner. Distribution has always been held by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. The Weinstein Company originally developed this film but later sold their share of the rights to MGM, thus becoming an MGM presentation. Chris McKenna made his first film's story and writings. Producer Max Howard explained how they came to attract so many A-list actors into the cast of this relatively obscure studio: "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". Jeremy Piven was originally cast as Doctor Schadenfreude, but Eddie Izzard replaced him and James Lipton appears as himself during a television viewing.

Music and soundtrack

The film's score was composed by Patrick Doyle. The soundtrack was released on September 30, 2008 by Varèse Sarabande.

Release

Igor was theatrically released on September 19, 2008 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. As of January 22, 2009, the film has grossed $19,528,602 in the United States and Canada and $11,218,902 in foreign countries totaling $30,747,504 worldwide. 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.

The film's DVD/Blu-ray release on January 3, 2009 though 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment ranked 4th in its opening weekend at the DVD sales chart, making $3,509,704 off 175,000 DVD units. As per the latest figures, 596,146 DVD units have been sold, translating to $11,739,919 in revenue.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 36% based on 89 reviews and an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With an animation style that apes Tim Burton, and a slew of cultural references that aren't clear enough to reach the crowds, Igor's patched together antics make it hard to see who the film is trying to please." The review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

John Anderson of Newsday stated that "Not all the jokes work, but most do, and the overall tenor of Igor is goofily funny -- probably a bit sophisticated for kids but certainly good-natured". Claudia Puig of USA Today awarded the film with two-and-a-half stars, writing: "This story of a world of mad scientists and their Igor lab assistants has some inspired lunacy as it spoofs classic horror films, though sometimes the jokes grow belabored". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune took his child to a screening and asked him to criticize the film, reporting that he "had a fairly good time". The film opened #4 with $7,803,347, behind Lakeview Terrace, Burn After Reading, and My Best Friend's Girl.