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Igor
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - MGM Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (21st April 2009). |
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The Film
 Pixar has set the basic standard for feature length computer generated films, starting with “Toy Story” (1995) with a combination of great storytelling and CG effects that created a basic feel for computer generated movies. Very separate from traditional hand drawn animation, CG films rely as much on funding, production values and computing power as artistic ability of the creators as you can see just how far CG effects have come from some of the original CG features like “Toy Story” up to the more recent works like “WALL•E” (2008). Unfortunately for more independent or starting out studios, this puts them at serious disadvantage compared to those who just have more experience to draw in talent and better hardware to produce films. Studios outside of Dreamworks or Pixar that find the funding to put together a team to create a CG film seem to be unable to find success, either from poor direction, storytelling or other factors. 2008’s “Igor” represents an outsider studio trying to break in with a decent $30 million budget, but couldn’t find the market to make it’s money back by taking in only $27 million despite huge names in the cast (though they can feel good about not being the lowest taking CG feature film for 2008, since “Delgo” managed to take in $694,782 no I didn’t miss a comma or some zeros). However it’s hard to feel bad for “Igor” as the film has a cheaper feel and poor voice acting matched with a mundane story. John Cusack takes the titular role of Igor, a lab assistant to evil scientist Doctor Glickenstein (John Cleese) who is working on a new invention for the villiage’s evil inventor competition. Igor dreams of moving beyond the role of being a sidekick and pursuing his goal of becoming an evil scientist with an assistant of his own. Soon after Glickenstien dies in a lab accident, Igor takes advantage of the situation to try and create his own invention to win the contest, creating life from a collection of inanimate body parts. After he brings his creation to life Igor discovers that his creation is more humble and mild mannered than he had hoped, despite the secret ingredient of the evil bone in her left pinky. Donning the name of Eva (Molly Shannon) the creation and Igor grow closer personally while the science fair draws closer. Unfortunately for Igor, the top evil scientist in Malaria, Doctor Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) is on the lookout for a new invention that will win the upcoming evil science fair as he’s not much of an inventor on his own but is far better at stealing the ideas and inventions of others. Just like the stock character the film is based on, the story itself is fairly formulaic as each character tries to show off the good in themselves and that not everyone has to be evil, in fairly basic fashion. There’s nothing terribly complicated here between characters and story as the kind hearted monster, the sidekicks and the supposed twist on Igor don’t have enough personality or generally much interesting about them. The voice actors of the film seem to recognize just how plain the film is, at least through their performances as they all range from just mediocre to flat out bored in their voices. But of course the actor’s performances can also be traced back to the sub-par writing as the twists on the characters and the attempt at crafting an original world falls flat. Visually the film has much depth either as the poor storytelling still leaves a bit of room for the designers imaginations to roam in creating all sorts of different inventions, but the animation just feels incredibly plain. Even if they were trying to go for a more simplistic style, the film doesn’t seem to believe in it’s own world enough to make the style work and turns out unappealing. Overall “Igor” doesn’t do anything that could challenge the dominance of Pixar, or even Dreamworks in playing second fiddle to Pixar. The huge names in the cast are mostly phoned in and make me think that most of the $30 million budget was used to hire a huge cast of actors to a small studio rather than securing some high level animation power and getting solid, less well known voice actors as a trade off. Whatever’s lost in name recognition can be brought back in with a good story and good look to the film, but when you can’t get either really going, I guess bringing in the big names can help use up some of that $30 million that’s being thrown around.
Video
Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspet ratio in 1080p 24/fps with AVC MPEG-4 encoding at 38 mbps, visually the film looks incredibly clean and clear as the digital transfer of a CG film to Blu-ray should look, however it makes the lackluster style, characters and some of the environments of the movie all the more clear at the same time. The colors and resolution all look great, but unfortunately the animation just isn’t exciting enough to make the transfer look even better.
Audio
There are tracks in English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixed at 48kHz/24-bit as well as a Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. The English DTS-HD track suffers from the same problems as the visuals as the transfer is good, however it makes some of the voice actor’s lack of enthusiasm in their voices even more evident. The actual soundtrack of the film makes some nice use of music like with some of Louis Prima’s songs, but for the most part like the designs it just doesn’t leave a huge impression. The film also comes with optional English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The blu-ray is fairly bare for an animated release, including just an audio commentary, an alternate opening and some conceptual art galleries as well as a single bonus trailer. First up is the audio commentary with director Tony Leondis, screenwriter Chris McKenna and producer Max Howard. The trio talk a bit about the theory behind the movie, everything from the color theory in setting the moods of the film, as well as the ideas behind the character design, the story and different ideas they threw around in pre production for the film. They do a lot of laughing at the jokes they’ve put together as well as complimenting the actors, and it would be more interesting if I had enjoyed the movie more but for me it gets annoying after a little while to hear them praise the film on and on and on. The alternate opening scene runs for 3 minutes 18 seconds and takes away the opening John Cusack narrative and replaces it with an old newsreel style introduction, along with a lead in scene that’s a bit more eerie going through the graveryard and using more original soundtrack. I liked this introduction a bit more than the original and if they had opted for more of this tone the film could have done a bit better. There are four concept galleries, though each plays as a non-interactive slideshow so there’s no real way to pause, jump to a point in a runtime or take a closer look at the images, making it all feel just like space filler on the enormous capacity of the blu-ray. The four galleries are: - "Characters" features 15 images, which includes character designs, color passes and different concepts. - "Set and Production Design" features 61 images, which includes the different vehicles, areas, etc. in sketch and CG forms. - "Storyboards" features 10 images, fairly typical storyboarding that shows off the different directions on the panels, though it would have been nicer to see them in a sideby side comparison with Igor Schadenfreude chase scene it depicts. - "Posters" features 31 images and is exactly what it says, a short handful of different posters or standees that appeared in different movie theatres, those that played up the horror roots and these were far more interesting than those that just showed huge images of the characters The only bonus trailer on the disc is: - “Horton Hears a Who” which runs for 2 minutes and 13 seconds.
Overall
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