"I, Frankenstein" has good action scenes, impressive visuals and that's about it.
The story takes place after the events of Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" in which the monster (Aaron Eckhart) outlives Dr. Frankenstein in the Arctic part of the world. This is all recapped in a cool-sounding narrative by the monster, which gets the crowd excited for what is going to happen.
The monster buries Dr. Frankenstein, and without any hesitation, the story goes downhill fast with some very out-of-place weirdness. Demons go after the monster, and he is saved by some members of a group of gargoyles led by the overly-dramatic Queen Leonore (Miranda Otto, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers").
He is taken to their castle where he is told that he was caught in the middle of a war between demons and gargoyles. Lenore randomly names him Adam, and he leaves for a couple hundred years. During this time, he is hunted further by some demons, and he goes in search of them so he can end his being chased. He gets in contact again with the gargoyles and finds out that he is part of a bigger plot that a demon prince has in store.
Frankly, there are a lot of things that do not make sense about this film. The villains' scheme involves the fact that "Adam" has no soul, which makes absolutely no sense. According to the story, he does not have one because it was man who placed him on the Earth rather than God. With that kind of logic, what makes normal people have souls? Are normal people not man-made from sexual reproduction?
Then there's the fact that when he goes in search of the demons, the gargoyles capture him and chain him up. Queen Leonore tells him that she sees nothing but darkness in his eyes now, but there really is no reason. The film never shows him change into anything bad or sinister. In fact, Adam seems pretty innocent. He seems to want to leave everyone alone and not be bothered. From what I understand, she is mad at him for being proactive and going in search of the demons so they will quit going after him.
Miranda Otto gives a razzie-worthy performance. She was in the second and third "Lord of the Rings" movies as Eowyn, the blonde woman who goes for Aragorn but is ultimately friend-zoned. It is ironic that she tries to emulate another character from the same franchise, the Lady Galadriel. She so obviously tries to copy from Cate Blanchett that her performance falls flat. In fact, it is downright laughable at parts.
The main problem with this film is it never takes time to develop its characters. Adam has so much potential to be interesting, but all we get is a Two-Face-sounding man who limps around sometimes. There is a hint at a character arc in that he did something horrible in his past, but given the circumstances he was in at the time, he still does not seem like a bad person. It is only known that he is supposed to be some dark thing because all the other characters around him say so.
A big portion of the film focuses on the gargoyles, but none of them are given much personality or realistic motivation. Several supposedly dramatic moments feature some of these characters dying, but because they were never distinguished from anyone else, there is no reason to have any emotional investment in those scenes.
Some good can be said about this film. There are some very impressive visuals. Whenever the demons are struck down, they become fire balls, and that makes for some awesome looking scenes. The action choreography is also very well done particularly in one scene in which Adam, whose weapons of choice are a pair of skinny clubs, fights a demon, who also wields clubs.
This movie gets two out of five stars from me. It has its entertainment value from having an odd premise and cool action scenes. However, that is not enough for me to recommend going out of your way to see it unless you are at a party, it happens to be on television or you just want to shut your brain down and watch some fighting.
Content: Rated PG-13. It is mostly rated this way for violence. There are quite a few action scenes, but there is no gore. I actually do not remember any profanity at all. I also do not remember any sexual content.
For more details on how I rate films, visit http://criticalchristopher.blogspot.com/2014/01/defining-rating-criteria.html
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