"Lisa" (Kathryn Newton) is a bit of a loner who lives in one of those second families where her rather feeble dad (Joe Chrest) has married the rather vain and odious "Janet" (Carla Gugino) who has a friendly daughter "Taffy" (Liza Soberano). At school, she has taken a shine to floppy-haired heart-throb "Michael" (Henry Einkenberry) and he seems to be a little interested too. Might romance blossom? Suddenly a lightening strike changes everything. The long-dead occupant of a grave she habitually sits beside when she is reading (Cole Sprouse) is electronically reinvigorated and finds his way into her home, her wardrobe and now, as with "ET", she has her own secret creature in the closet. Thing is, there are bits of her new friend missing - his ear, his tongue, his hand (that's not a comprehensive list!) - so the ensuing escapades mix science with comedy and some good old doses of vengeance as they try to restore him to his former, piano playing, glory. It could have been much more fun, this, if it had committed to the audience one way or the other. It's clearly gone for a wide appeal and so compromised on the darkness and adult nature of the humour. Many of the scenarios - especially at the the rather brutal and eye-watering conclusion, could have worked so much better had Zelda Williams aimed the movie more at those who could appreciate the dark comedy rather than dilute it down to something akin to a frat-comedy. It's better than I was expecting, and Newton does fine as the film progresses, it's just a shame it didn't really know were to go or who it was for.
There are glimpses of goodness, though so short they don't hide the film's frailties.
<em>'Lisa Frankenstein'</em> is, in my opinion, a disappointment. I can kinda see what they were going for and at times I could appreciate it, but all in all it doesn't really work for me. I will say the pacing isn't actually that bad, the film went by relatively quickly. The two big weaknesses to me were the dialogue and simply the story in general, both are rather quite dull... if they weren't, I may have enjoyed this.
The cast are one of the film's more positive features. I like Kathryn Newton, I remember thinking she was great in the similarly underwhelming <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/freaky/" rel="nofollow">Freaky</a>'</em> from 2020, and she does try with what she's got to work with here. Carla Gugino is possibly the standout, I would've liked to have seen more of her. Liza Soberano is alright, while Joe Chrest plays a literal continuation of his Ted Wheeler.
I will say that I felt the film did slightly improve towards the end, just not enough for me to say that I had a good time watching it unfortunately. I got to see this in <em><a href="https://letterboxd.com/r96sk/list/watched-in-an-empty-cinema/" rel="nofollow">an empty cinema</a></em>, which is always nice. I see this got released basically a month ago everywhere else, wonder why the UK got it so late. I guess as there seemingly aren't as many films out right now due to that sandworm movie <a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/dune-part-two/" rel="nofollow">thingy</a> taking over? Who knows.
