Igor

Igor is a family animation with a darker tinge, which makes up in hyperactive energy what it lacks in originality. It is inspired by Tim Burton's sepulchral gloom: a taste that I have never entirely acquired, though it is agreeable enough here. John Cusack voices the eponymous hunchbacked, bug-eyed evil scientist's assistant in the miserable principality of Malaria, a place denied sunlight and so dark in outlook that it has created an entire economy based on evil inventions. Igor is himself an evil scientist wannabe, and when his employer Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese) blows himself up with a misjudged experiment, Igor steps in and begins work on creating a human from recovered body parts. Mortifyingly, the resulting misshapen female is not evil, and a brainwashing procedure intended to correct this goes terribly wrong, creating in "Eva" a desire to be a stage actress - she trills things like: "I must write this down in my sense-memory journal" and lumbers off. Another evil scientist Dr Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) plans on snatching Eva and claiming her as his own. This film is outclassed by the Pixar stable, but it's entertaining stuff for the children.