In this animated comedy adventure, John Cusack plays the titular character, a sweet, intelligent lab assistant to an evil mad scientist who creates life, much to the chagrin of the mad-scientist community, in the, uh, person of a giantess named Eve. Although it's completely computer animated, the movie recalls such stop-motion-animation fare as The Nightmare before Christmas and the recent Coraline, not to mention the old Universal monster classics, whose old clichés get tweaked a few times.

Igor (it's both his name and his profession) works for Dr. Glickenstein (John Cleese), who's desperately trying to make an evil invention to enter into the Evil Scientists Fair. See, King Malbert (Jay Leno) believes that the town can prosper only through these evil inventions, what with the farming community destroyed by climate change. Meanwhile, Igor - our Igor - is much smarter than he lets on, as Igors are stereotypically supposed to be dumb, slurring oafs good only for fetching things and pulling switches. Igor, in fact, has already made two inventions - a snide, suicidal-yet-immortal rabbit (Steve Buscemi), and a dumb robot with a brain (Sean Hayes).

Circumstances lead Igor to try to make his own evil entry - the creation of life itself, something the real evil scientists have never been able to accomplish. The result: Eva, a giant, giant, giantess who's... well, not evil. This is because her Evil Bone must be activated, see; to do so, Igor even takes her to get brainwashed, but instead of horror images Eva somehow watches an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio with James Lipton, so when she emerges she's a struggling actress who's on her way to a big audition.

Personally, I found this movie a whole lot of fun, probably because a) I love the old monster movies that are just skewered here and b) I love animated movies, too. John Cusack, one of my all-time favorites (I've seen more than thirty of his films) is great as the not-quite-evil lab assistant, and the animation is top notch, with wonderfully realized backgrounds that recall those old monster movies quite well. Steve Buscemi is an absolute hoot as Scamper, easily stealing every scene he's in - he gets all the great lines, but it's Buscemi's comic timing that make them come alive. So to speak. There's also a contextually perfect soundtrack, including a bouncy tune by Louis Prima called "The Bigger the Figure." Molly Shannon, who voices Eva, also delivers a fun, appealing performance.

Animated fable about a cliché hunchbacked evil scientist's assistant (John Cusack) who aspires to become a scientist himself, much to the displeasure of the rest of the evil science community.

"Igor" is the first animated feature film produced by Exodus Film Group and the French CGI animation studio, Sparx*. Work was split between the studio's Paris and Vietnam facilities, and despite a large array of celebrity voices, the film ended up becoming rather obscure. While not a smashing success, the film did earn a small profit. (This would also likely be the last film from Sparx*, as they were acquired by Virtuos shortly after.)

Rotten Tomatoes writes, "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." This sums it up very nicely. The animation is clearly Burton-inspired (the king looks an awful lot like Halloween's mayor), and much of it was hit and miss. Fun, yes, but never a home run. Trying to pinpoint where it went wrong is difficult, though... something just feels off.

When I first heard about a CGI movie being made called "Igor", I was pretty excited--it sounded pretty cool and the publicity photos looked interesting. Yet, despite this, I never got around to seeing this in the theater. Now that I just saw it on Showtime, I am thrilled that I never got around to spending my hard-earned cash on this very limp film.

The film starts well enough--you learn that 'Igors' are a group of assistants who get educated on how to be the perfect assistants for mad scientists. They are to blindly obey, have no creative thoughts of their own and have no real purpose other than to serve. Oddly, however, the Igor of the film's title is different. He wants to become a mad scientist himself and secretly has been experimenting--creating a dumb talking brain in a jar as well as an indestructible rabbit who is suicidal. Now, his ultimate creation, a giant female monster is about to be unleashed--all it needs is for Igor to push the switch and send a bazillion volts into her to bring her to life. But, sadly, she turns out to be very nice--and who would give this the award for the upcoming mad scientist science fair?! And, on top of that, a truly evil mad scientist is bent on stealing this invention for himself.

The film is a very unusual CGI movie artistically. The CG is unusual but also not particularly pretty--looking a generation behind some of the other CGI movies that debuted in 2008. It's a style that you'll either love or hate--and I hated it. However, the CG was the least of the film's problems. The story simply is bad. As a children's movie, it's really unacceptable for younger audiences as it's pretty violent--with some nasty deaths and language issues. As a film for adults, the story seems pretty dumb. Case in point--the entire end of the film--which an incomprehensible mess involving the nice monster becoming mean and destroying everything while dressed like Annie and singing "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow"!! So would I recommend this film? No. But I guess for ages 10-12 it's not too bad--anyone younger shouldn't see it and anyone older would be shocked by the incomprehensible lameness.