The revival of Universals monsters ended here. Coppollas Dracula was an enormous success, so this came only two years later. And you had the mediocre Wolf with Jack Nicholson around the same time. The story is well known, don't mess with nature. I've never read Mary Shelley, so don't know how faitful Frank Darabount was when he wrote the script. BUT what could have been a great movie, falls apart in the seams with some very odd editing. Branagh, who both directs and plays Frankenstein bops around like a Formula 1 driver to start the story. First at the North Pole, then back to Frankenstein was a child, then grownup, then as a loudmouth student. We meet John Cleese as a very experimental scientist, who becomes Frankensteins mentor. And in what I thought was a flashback, we see him get killed. But it's not a flashback, it's the catalyst for Frankenstein to create a monster from his mentors killer. Very messy editing. In the end, the movie is a mix of omd Frankenstein and (IMO) the much better Bride of Frankenstein. Robert De Niro shows again why he was the best actor of his generation as the lonenly monster. Would be interesting to know how much of the editing is Brannagh, and how much was the execs wanted to shorten down the run time.
Review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
