by Everett Jensen

Created on: October 21, 2008

Igor
directed by Anthony Leondis
written by Chris McKenna
starring John Cusack, Eddie Izzard, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Jennifer Coolidge, Jay Leno, Christian Slater, Arsenio Hall

The untold truth beckons and fawns. A social order is created to exclude joy and tyranny of sunshine. A misshapen freak to the perfect order is born and bound for essential servitude without the merest potentiality of grinding out of his sorry, prefabricated state of lowest existence. Then one is born who questions the order and reacts to his surroundings with dreaded curiosity and perceives the world as if he too were one of those elevated beings who naturally lords over those beneath. In this world, one of the forgotten is called Igor just like all the rest. Only he has learned to see far beyond the limits of his condition and into realms of beauty, capacity, longingness that remain obscure to all the others.

Igor (Cusack) is the slave of Dr. Glickenstein (Cleese), one of the many "Evil Geniuses" who are competing in the only competition that matters in a tiny burg called Malaria. This used to be a lovely place where everyone lived happy little lives and the weather was always temp perfect. Then, a mysterious cloud formation came in and never left, leaving the town gloomy to the core and all its inhabitants broke, desperate, and miserable. From the ashes rose the great leader King Malbert (Leno) who originated the idea for the competition where the "evil" inventions fight to the death to determine who is the most evil one of all. The idea of evil, or evil itself is a theme that runs throughout this film. It informs many scenes although it's essentially aesthetic.

Dr. Glickenstein dies while attempting to create a rocket ship leaving Igor with the chance he has always dreamed of. So, he goes to work on his big project, in which, like Dr. Frankenstein, he creates life. The result is a giant womanish creature named Eva (Shannon), large in stature and coquettish in demeanor. The only problem is she's not evil enough. Her evil bone didn't kick in and Igor tries desperately to make her evil but only manages to turn her into an inspiring actress. From there we have the major aspects of the plot.

The film is computer animated and does manage to create a world that seems worth taking a peek into. The characters all work within the context of the film mainly because the voice work is all up to par. The basic themes in this film are universal and have been explored with

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