Quirky and campy romantic horror-comedy, “Lisa Frankenstein” just hit theaters in February 2024.
Madonna, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, John Mellencamp, Bon Jovi, Whitney all ruled the airwaves. Any of those names sound familiar? The list goes on and on. Hair scrunchies, bright colors, leg warmers, rolled up tight jeans. Oh the 1980’s were one blast of a decade!
Love him or loathe him, Ronald Reagan was president overseeing the country’s affairs, MTV was a new network on the boob tube, and everyone walked around holding onto their own personal Walkman. The Breakfast Club was one of the most popular movies of the decade, along with Top Gun. We had real fears dealing with a new and unknown illness being called the AIDS Crisis. The news and headlines were plagued by top stories of The Berlin Wall falling, and The Challenger exploding. Sounds like quite an eventful decade if you ask me…
Lisa Frankenstein is a coming of RAGE (I mean “age”) love story of dark and humorous proportions. Written by one of my favorite and most uniquely recognizable script writers Diablo Cody (Young Adult), who also won an Oscar for her writing on the film, Juno. Interestingly enough, first time director Zelda Williams is actually the daughter of the late-great Robin Williams.
An unpopular, misunderstood loner named Lisa Swallows (that last name wasn’t written to be tongue in cheek, oh god no) develops a crush on…well a corpse played by Cole Sprouse (Riverdale). Oh, come on, cut the girl some slack, we were all young once. Let her crush on a creature if she desires for Pete’s sake. Just like the saying goes, “don’t knock it until you try it,” right?
Lisa and the re-imagined Victorian creature embark on a path that is laced with love, happiness, and a few bloody body parts along the way. Filmed in New Orleans, I found this comedy/horror to be fresh, quick, and hard not to like.
Lisa Frankenstein is not going to be remembered in the long haul, but that’s alright too; not everything is meant to reinvent the wheel. It was one hour and forty-one minutes of slapstick fun and outrageousness that brought us back to a decade that at this point, just like this film, is only meant to warm one’s cold, cold heart.
”Lisa Frankenstein.” starring: Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse
Christopher’s “Meow” Score: “7” paws out of 10.
