Igor (film)
Encyclopedia
Igor is a 2008 computer animated family
Family film
A family film is a film genre that is designed to appeal to a variety of age groups and, thus, families.In December 2005, Steven Spielberg's 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial came first in a poll of the 100 Greatest Family Films. The genre today generates billions of dollars per annum.Family...

 comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 about the stock character
Stock character
A Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...

 Igor
Igor (fictional character)
Igor is the traditional stock character or cliché hunch-backed assistant or butler to many types of villain, such as Count Dracula or a mad scientist, familiar from many horror movies and horror movie parodies, the Frankenstein series and Van Helsing films in particular.-Origins:Dwight Frye's...

. The plot revolves around the grotesque title figure Igor and his dreams of winning first place at the Evil Science Fair. The movie was released on September 19, 2008. The film features the voices of John Cusack
John Cusack
John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

 as the title character, along with John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

, Jennifer Coolidge
Jennifer Coolidge
Jennifer Coolidge is an American actress best known for playing "Stifler's mom," the older woman in the film American Pie ; Hilary Duff's stepmother in A Cinderella Story ; Paulette, the manicurist in Legally Blonde and its sequel; the voice of Aunt Fanny in the animated feature Robots ; for her...

, Arsenio Hall
Arsenio Hall
Arsenio Hall is an American actor, comedian, and former talk show host. He is best known for his talk show The Arsenio Hall Show, which ran between 1989 and 1994, and his roles in the films Coming to America and Harlem Nights.Hall is also known for his appearance as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the...

, Sean Hayes, Eddie Izzard
Eddie Izzard
Edward John "Eddie" Izzard is a British stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime...

, Jay Leno
Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

, Molly Shannon
Molly Shannon
Molly Helen Shannon is an American comic actress best known for her work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995–2001 and for starring in the films Superstar and Year of the Dog. More recently, she starred in NBC's Kath & Kim from 2008–2009 and on the TBS animated series Neighbors from...

, Christian Slater
Christian Slater
Christian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor. He made his film debut with a small role in The Postman Always Rings Twice before playing a leading role in the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean...

 and Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi
Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,...

. The film was considered a financial blip, grossing just $30m worldwide with a $25m budget.

Plot

In the kingdom of Malaria, the economy was once based on agriculture until a mysterious climate change killed their crops. The new King, Malbert (Leno), restructured the economy based on "Evil Inventions" - to wit, blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...

ing the rest of the world to pay Malaria not to unleash the various bizarre doomsday devices invented by a ruling class of Evil Scientists. Malarians born with a hunch on their backs
Kyphosis
Kyphosis , also called roundback or Kelso's hunchback, is a condition of over-curvature of the thoracic vertebrae...

 (an evidently common deformity) are classed as "Igors" and forced to serve as the Scientists' laboratory assistants, thought of as stupid and clumsy.

One Igor
Igor
Igor is a given name derived from the Norse name Ingvar, that was brought to ancient Rus' by the Norse Varangians, in the form Ingvar or Yngvar...

 (Cusack), servant to the somewhat dull-minded Doctor Glickenstein (Cleese), is actually a talented inventor who aspires to be an Evil Scientist himself. His inventions include "Scamper" (Buscemi), a re-animated rabbit with immortality who makes several (failed) attempts at suicide (Igor says the immortality is a hassle for Scamper because he doesn't want to live). Igor also made the rabbit talk, (which is a hassle for Igor since he doesn't shut up); and "Brain" (Hayes), a human brain transplanted into a life support jar equipped with wheels and a robotic arm, who is, ironically, not very smart (and often called "Brian" by others, due to a spelling error on the jar in permanent marker [he claimed "he was in a hurry"]. There were stories that upon his death, the brain of the smartest person in the world was put in a jar long ago, though Brain isn't that brain).

Igor gets his chance to shine when Glickenstein's entry into the annual Evil Science Fair malfunctions and explodes, taking Glickenstein with it. When King Malbert visits Glickenstein's castle, Igor pretends to be helping him with the most evil invention ever: "creating life".

The outcome of the upcoming Fair is of great interest to the King, who is wary of the growing popularity of the reigning victor, Dr. Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This German word is used as a loanword in English and some other languages, and has been calqued in Danish and Norwegian as skadefryd and Swedish as skadeglädje....

 (Izzard), which is growing to rival the King's own. Schadenfreude (who is in fact a complete fraud who steals work of other scientists), is sick of having to bow and scrape to the King, and decides to use his next winning "invention" to seize power. His main accomplice is his girlfriend, Jaclyn (Coolidge), a shapeshifter who masquerades as the thirteen different girlfriends of Malaria's other Evil Scientists (though only four forms were seen, including herself and Glickenstein's former girlfriend Heidi, as well as two unnamed girlfriends).

With Brain and Scamper's help, Igor assembles a huge, monstrous being from human remains, endowed with super-strength, invulnerability, and an "evil bone." But when he brings her to life, Igor is dismayed to discover that the bone has not been activated, and the giant is gentle, affectionate, and feminine. Trying to convince it of its "evil" nature, Igor inadvertently dubs it "Eva."

Igor takes Eva to a "Brain-Wash", a service which uses television to alter the personalities of those who use it, which attempts to turn Eva violent by exposing her to violent images. However, Brain, who is watching television in the next room, mistakenly changes the channel while trying to fix his own television. Eva ends up watching an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, and adopts, permanently, the personality of a kind-hearted aspiring actress.

Igor can only get her to cooperate by convincing her that the upcoming Evil Science Fair is in fact an audition for the role of Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...

.

Learning of Eva's existence, Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to steal her, first through outright theft, then by inviting Igor into his castle. When Igor refuses to help him, Schadenfreude exposes him to the King, who throws him into an "Igor Recycling Chute," which leads to the "Igor Recycling Plant," while Schadenfreude takes control of Eva.

Just before the Science Fair, Schadenfreude manages to activate her "Evil Bone" by goading her into attacking him, which transforms her into a violent monster. Unleashed into the Evil Science Fair, she destroys all the other Evil Inventions while singing "Tomorrow" from Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...

.

Igor escapes from the Recycling Plant with Scamper and Brain's help, and rushes to the Fair to save Eva. Ascending into the King's castle which overlooks the arena, Igor discovers a machine at the top (called the "Evil Beacon") that acts as a magnet for the storm clouds that have plagued Malaria for years. Shocked, Igor realizes that the King deliberately killed Malaria's crops, to keep them enslaved to his "Evil Inventions" plan.

Igor rushes into the arena and reasons with Eva, telling her that all beings have the potential for evil, but it is their choice to ignore it. Eva regains her normal personality. Scamper and Brain, meanwhile, deactivate the weather-manipulation machine, allowing the climate to return to its temperate character, and drop the device onto King Malbert, killing him. Schadenfreude takes the throne after Malbert's death for a brief few minutes, but he is shouted down when the people realize that the King has deceived them all. At the same time, Jacklyn, who is dependent on special pills to retain her shapeshifting abilities, runs out of pills and reverts to her normal form: a female Igor.

Malaria regains its former pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

 character. Igor is dubbed President, and all his former colleagues enjoy equal status with their former Masters. The annual Science Fair is changed into an annual musical theater showcase, with Eva as the star, and Scamper and Brain as costume designer and properties manager. Igor and Eva stand together when the Blind Orphans sing and the crowd cheers in the audience.

Voice cast

  • John Cusack
    John Cusack
    John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

     as Igor
  • Steve Buscemi
    Steve Buscemi
    Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,...

     as Scamper
  • John Cleese
    John Cleese
    John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

     as Doctor Glickenstein
  • Eddie Izzard
    Eddie Izzard
    Edward John "Eddie" Izzard is a British stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime...

     as Doctor Schadenfreude
    Schadenfreude
    Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This German word is used as a loanword in English and some other languages, and has been calqued in Danish and Norwegian as skadefryd and Swedish as skadeglädje....

  • Molly Shannon
    Molly Shannon
    Molly Helen Shannon is an American comic actress best known for her work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995–2001 and for starring in the films Superstar and Year of the Dog. More recently, she starred in NBC's Kath & Kim from 2008–2009 and on the TBS animated series Neighbors from...

     as Eva
  • Jennifer Coolidge
    Jennifer Coolidge
    Jennifer Coolidge is an American actress best known for playing "Stifler's mom," the older woman in the film American Pie ; Hilary Duff's stepmother in A Cinderella Story ; Paulette, the manicurist in Legally Blonde and its sequel; the voice of Aunt Fanny in the animated feature Robots ; for her...

     as Jacqueline / Heidi
  • Jay Leno
    Jay Leno
    James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

     as King Malbert
  • Sean Hayes
    Sean Hayes (actor)
    Sean Patrick Hayes is an American actor and comedian. He is widely known for his role as Jack McFarland in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, for which he won an Emmy Award, four SAG Awards, one American Comedy Award, and six Golden Globes nominations.He also portrayed comedian Jerry Lewis in the...

     as Brain
  • Paul Vogt
    Paul Vogt
    Paul C. Vogt is an American actor and comedian best known for his work as a cast member on the sketch comedy programs MADtv, The Big Gay Sketch Show and The Rerun Show.-Life and career:...

     as Buzz Offmann
  • Christian Slater
    Christian Slater
    Christian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor. He made his film debut with a small role in The Postman Always Rings Twice before playing a leading role in the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean...

     as Doctor Schadenfreude's Igor
  • Arsenio Hall
    Arsenio Hall
    Arsenio Hall is an American actor, comedian, and former talk show host. He is best known for his talk show The Arsenio Hall Show, which ran between 1989 and 1994, and his roles in the films Coming to America and Harlem Nights.Hall is also known for his appearance as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the...

     as Carl Cristall
  • Sam Gold
    Sam Gold
    Sam Gold is an American voice actor. He has video game and animated roles.-Animated roles:*The Jungle Book - Bagheera, Tabaqui*The Mr. Men Show - Mr. Bounce, Mr. Grumpy, and Mr...

     as Ham the Egg

Casting

Producer Max Howard
Max Howard
Max Howard is a British-born actor and film producer, based in Los Angeles. He has worked on or been responsible for a number of successful film projects...

 explained how they came to attract so many A-list actors into the cast of this relatively obscure studio: "We sent them the script... Steve Buscemi signed on very early, and he's an 'actor's actor.' Then others signed on... it just took off that way".

Christian Slater
Christian Slater
Christian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor. He made his film debut with a small role in The Postman Always Rings Twice before playing a leading role in the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean...

 was originally cast for the voice of Igor. Jeremy Piven
Jeremy Piven
Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor....

 was originally cast as Doctor Schadenfreude.

James Lipton
James Lipton
James Lipton is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994...

 appears as himself during a television viewing.

Production

This is the first animated feature film produced by Exodus Film Group; the CG animation was created by French studio Sparx*. Work on Sparx’s CG feature Igor was split between the studio’s Paris and Vietnam facilities. The Damas proprietary software was used to manage the digital assets and the production workflows of both sites, in an interconnected manner. Distribution has always been held by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures — The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...

 originally developed this film but later sold their share of the rights to MGM, thus becoming an MGM presentation.

Chris McKenna was the original director of the film but replaced with Tony Leondis.

Reception

Igor has received generally negative to mixed reviews by critics. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reported that 35% of critics gave positive reviews. Among Rotten Tomatoes's Cream of the Crop, the film garnered an overall 21% rating based on 14 reviews. Another review aggretator, Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 gave the film a 40/100 approval rating classifying the film has received "mixed or average reviews".

John Anderson of Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...

stated that "Not all the jokes work, but most do, and the overall tenor of Igor is goofily funny -- probably a bit sophisticated for kids but certainly good-natured". Claudia Puig of USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

awarded the film with a middling two-and-a-half stars, writing: "This story of a world of mad scientists and their Igor lab assistants has some inspired lunacy as it spoofs classic horror films, though sometimes the jokes grow belabored". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

took his child to a screening and asked him to criticize the movie, reporting that they "had a fairly good time".

The film opened #4 with $7,803,347, behind Lakeview Terrace
Lakeview Terrace
Lakeview Terrace is a 2008 American thriller film directed by Neil LaBute, co-produced by Will Smith, written by David Loughery and Howard Korder, and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington. Jackson plays a racist LAPD sergeant who terrorizes his new next-door neighbors...

, Burn After Reading
Burn After Reading
Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Brad Pitt. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and it was released on October 17, 2008...

, and My Best Friend's Girl
My Best Friend's Girl (2008 film)
My Best Friend's Girl is a 2008 romantic comedy film by Howard Deutch and stars Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs, Diora Baird, Alec Baldwin, and Lizzy Caplan. It was released on September 19, 2008.-Plot:...

. As of December 23, 2008, the film has grossed $19,429,791 in the United States and Canada and $8,172,638 in foreign countries totaling $27,602,429 worldwide.

In the UK, the film opened on 32 screens with a gross of £56,177, for a screen average of £1,756, and placing it at 20 in the box office chart. The mainstream release opened on 17 October, at 418 screens, and made £981,750 with a screen average of £2,348. This placed it at No. 3 for that weekend. The UK total gross is £1,110,859.

Igor was Nominated for an Annie award for Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465502/awards)

Despite generally mixed/negative reviews, MGM still sent the film as their entry for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

DVD sales

The DVD and Blu-Ray of Igor was released on January 3, 2009 and was ranked 4 in its opening weekend at the DVD sales chart, making $3,509,704 off 175,000 DVD units. As per the latest figures, 596,146 DVD units have been sold, translating to $11,739,919 in revenue.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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