The new animated feature with the lead character IGOR has the animated characters looking dis-alarmingly similar to Tim Burton A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.  With its gothic look, dark background and a story set in the town of Malaria where the sun never shines, the story of IGOR centers on hunchback Igor (John Cusack) who graduated from hunchback school to become a mad scientist assistant.

But Igor is an ambitious mad scientist wannabe who has aims at winning the Evil Science Fair by creating a new evil monster.  It turns out that his invention is a gigantic aspiring actress (Molly Shannon) with a heart of gold and great dance moves.  IGOR the film at times looks like an animated musical wannabe.

IGOR has all the ingredients for the perfect children’s tale.  Evil is bad and good triumphs, obviously.  Malaria has the sun shine bright again.  IGOR has a nice corny message to boot – It is better to be a good nobody and than evil somebody.

It is curious to note that most assistants of the evil inventors from the horror genre had some deformity from speech to intelligence but few were hunchbacked.  The only hunchbacked assistants (I recall) were Marty Feldman’s character in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (a film spoof itself) and the evil scientist’s in Tim Burton’s own A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

The actors voicing the characters do above average work especially Cusack and Shannon including other well-known names like Brits Eddie Izzard and John Cleese.

There is nothing really wrong with IGOR.  Director Leondis’ film is entertaining, funny and eventful.  Trouble is that the plot is all too predictable, down to the soundtrack of used (non-original) songs.  One could argue that the film is a spoof and thus able to rip off other films.  But in the end, adult audiences will go away feeling that all this has been done before – right down to the Burton-like animated characters.