If I might provide a scintillating look behind the scenes here at Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, my laptop broke recently. The camera and the microphone stopped working and I need those for the Travolta/Cage podcast so I had to take it into the shop. That’s why I have been off-line for the last two days. I’m writing this on my wife’s computer and it fucking sucks.
I hate being without my computer. It’s like a part of me is missing, like my laptop isn’t just an essential tool for work; it’s part of who I am on an existential level. That’s why it feels strange to use somebody else’s computer.
I had a ticket for the 10:30 showing. I see almost all of the films I write about for this newsletter either with my nine year old son Declan during the weekend or late at night after my wife and children are asleep. In hindsight I probably could have seen Lisa Frankenstein with Declan. It’s about an unusually spooky, morbid teenager obsessed with horror and all things gothic and as an unusually spooky, morbid pre-teen obsessed with horror and all things gothic he probably would have enjoyed it.
I finished my Apple Store appointment early so I thought I would be able to make it to an earlier showing of Lisa Frankenstein without missing anything.
I was wrong. Oh sweet blessed lord was I ever wrong. Instead of merely missing the previews I seemed to have missed the entire first act.
This, friends, was disconcerting. And unusual. I cannot remember the last time that I was late to a movie. It’s so unusual, in fact, that I have decided to waste six whole paragraphs on the fairly mundane subject of being late to a movie.
I’m not going to lie. It fucked me. Between having to give up my computer to get fixed and being unexpectedly, even inexplicably late I felt very dysregulated. So I would like to formally apologize to director Zelda Willams, whose dad was the star of The World’s Greatest Dad, and screenwriter Diablo Cody for seeing Lisa Frankenstein under less than ideal circumstances. I thought about re-watching the movie in its entirety once 10:30 rolled around but time is a precious commodity and I figured it would be enough to see the movie in its entirety, albeit backwards, rather than see it one and a half times.
Incidentally, I’ve cut down my Mountain Dew consumption to three bottles a day, I’ve drastically reduced my phone time/social media consumption and last night I attended a screening of I Want to Hold Your Hand with Eddie Deezen in attendance and got an autographed poster. None of that has anything to do with Lisa Frankenstein but then again, neither does anything I’ve written so far either.
I blame my wife’s computer. It’s forcing me to be self-indulgent and digressive. Also, it’s encouraging me to kill people. No, I won’t kill those student nurses, voices inside my wife’s computer! They don’t all deserve to be sacrificed to the Great Beast! In fact, they’re all learning a useful trade that will benefit humanity, unlike what I do.
I was not a fan of the movie Juno. For several years hating Juno was pretty much my entire personality, to the point where I insisted that my tombstone read “He really did not care for Juno.”
In hindsight, that seems a little silly. I’ve subsequently come around on Diablo Cody. I dug Young Adult and I very much dug Lisa Frankenstein’s smartass retro vibe.
Kathryn Newton, who, at twenty seven is a little young to be playing a teenager, is a goddamn delight as anti-hero Lisa Swallows. She’s a small town Midwestern goth in 1989 mourning her mother’s violent death and bitterly resenting her cruel, condescending stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino). In true goth fashion, Lisa has a favorite grave, one inhabited by a handsome soul who died a very long time ago.
Lisa has a crush on a more alive classmate who is both a hunk and a brain but one strange night a bolt of lightning hits her favorite grave and out of it lurches a creature out of time and out of mind played by former child star Cole Sprouse.
Like Frankenstein’s Monster (more popularly known as Frankenstein), the Creature played by Sprouse is a riveting combination of unexpected tenderness and brute force. He’s either a child-like naif exploring a world that he does not understand and was not meant for monsters like him or he is straight up murdering townspeople in a homicidal rage.
It’s not easy to create an indelible, unforgettable lead character who does not possess the ability to talk but Sprouse manages that tricky feat. He delivers a wonderfully expressive performance that reminded me of Daniel Radcliffe’s iconic turn as a flatulent corpse who teaches us all about life and love in Swiss Army Man.
There’s something appealingly puppy-like about Sprouse’s performance, an unexpected innocence. Newton and Sprouse have explosive chemistry. Not even death can get in between their curious but potent bond.
Before he becomes her eternal bae the Creature first acts as a deadly instrument of Lisa’s will. He knows just how much she despises her stepmother so he does Lisa and the world a favor by murdering her.
That’s the thing about Frankenstein: he did some murders not because he was inherently evil but because he was socially awkward and didn’t understand the world in all of its complexity. He didn’t understand, for example, why it’s not a good thing to go around murdering people.
Having watch Lisa Frankenstein backwards, I was struck by how much more likable she is the first half, before she starts having her lumbering new sidekick kill people for reasons of varying validity.
After offing the evil stepmother the Creature then turns his malevolent attention to a handsy classmate of Lisa.
The posthumous murder spree concludes with the Creature and Lisa finding the boy Lisa had a crush on canoodling with her popular, sexy cheerleader step-sister. This leads the Creature to murder the poor boy and remove his penis so that he can use it for himself.
The world is just not ready for Lisa and her dead/undead/alive new/ancient boyfriend. High school romance is always dramatic and often painful, but seldom to this extent. Lisa and the Creature are the ultimate star-crossed lovers. The big divide in their relationship is the one separating life from death but the Creature’s emergence from the grave suggests that the line between life and death isn’t anywhere near as concrete and impregnable as it might seem.
For an audacious comedy from an Academy Award winning screenwriter Lisa Frankenstein is almost perversely modest. It’s a modestly budgeted throwback to late 1980s dark comedies like Beetlejuice and Heathers that aspires to minor cult status rather than boffo box-office or critical hosannas.
Cody’s script is full of her signature snappy patter but the film lives and dies on the strength of the perfectly cast Newton and Sprouse, a goth couple for the ages.
Lisa Frankenstein isn’t for everyone. That’s its appeal. It’s for people like me and my son so when this comes out on streaming I might just re-watch it, if only so that I can see it how the filmmakers intended, and not Benjamin Button the experience instead.
Three and a half stars out of five
P.S-Incidentally I am bleeding paid subscribers, probably from people leaving Substack so if you want to upgrade to a paid subscription (just 5 bucks a month!) now would be an excellent time to do so.
My wife has heen wanting to go to the theatre and I guess it's this or Madame Web? And it's not gonna be Madame Web
I remember when I had to depend on my parents dropping me off for movies (ah the 80s, when parents would just leave their kids alone in a public place), they would often drop me off too late for the beginning. This is probably because I found out the showtimes a little late in the game and begged them to take me (and see if I could get a few bucks for treats). Specifically, the first time I saw Back to the Future, I missed the entire prologue where you meet the McFlys in 1985. I walked in the auditorium just as the DeLorean was backing out of Doc Brown's truck in the mall parking lot. Naturally, I waited around for the next show to catch the beginning. This was one case where I absolutely loved and understood the movie without ever having seen the "before" 1985.
That said, I am much better now about getting into the theaters before the movie starts. We were a little late arriving to Spider-Man Across the Universe, but that was largely due to crowds and a janky new automated ticketing/concession system that seemed to be giving EVERYONE trouble, myself included. We luckily only missed a couple of previews.