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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nUgh, what\u2019s with all these movies going for the wrong ratings lately? The R-rated \u201cAnyone But You\u201d didn\u2019t need all that crudeness, it should have aimed for the PG-13 crowd. The PG-13 \u201cArgylle\u201d celebrates blowing away bad guys way too much for anything other than an R to make sense. \u201cLisa Frankenstein\u201d doesn\u2019t have nearly as high a body count as \u201cArgylle\u201d (in fact, I think some deaths may technically have to be subtracted), but when there\u2019s a body, it counts. \u201cFilming around\u201d certain scenes of sex and violence just makes the movie seem\u2026 neutered. I\u2019m especially referring to a scene with an actual neutering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lisa (Newton), a teenager in 1989, doesn\u2019t fit in. She doesn\u2019t have any friends, save for her unrequited crush Michael (Henry Eikenberry) and well-meaning-but-airheaded stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano). She suffered the horrific loss of her mother a few years ago, and her father married the awful Janet (Carla Gugino), which makes home life miserable. She spends most of her free time between home and school at an abandoned cemetery. Her favorite gravestone features a bust of a handsome young man, and she jokingly wishes that she could join him. Some higher power takes this wish literally, and a magical lightning strike later, a reanimated corpse (Cole Sprouse) is breaking into Lisa\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lisa takes on \u201cThe Creature\u201d as a pet project. She helps him wash off centuries of soil, lets him sleep in her closet, and gives him clothes to wear (you better believe there\u2019s a montage of him trying on outfits). He\u2019s still very much suffering the effects of being dead, including missing certain body parts, but he helps her out too, listening to her talk about her problems, playing her songs on the piano (the best scene in the movie is a musical number), and vanquishing her enemies. Lisa has to hide The Creature and their shared misdeeds, and she knows that their relationship can\u2019t last much longer, but maybe it can last just long enough for her to get with Michael? She still wants the heartthrob whose heart can actually throb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was onboard with \u201cLisa Frankenstein\u201d for a good chunk of its runtime. The jokes were hitting more than they missed, and I was drawn in by Newton\u2019s performance. Then the serious violence kicked in and Lisa lost her relatability. I feel like the filmmakers misunderstood the praise for Newton in \u201cFreaky.\u201d Yes, she was great as both an awkward teenager and a psychotic serial killer, but those were two different characters. Lisa is an unholy mashup of the two, and while I can certainly understand the complexity of a goody-two-shoes discovering she has a dark side, Lisa goes so dark that she validates everyone who wrote her off as an ostracism-worthy weirdo in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With its focus on the relationship between a healthy, articulate woman and a lumbering, inarticulate Creature, \u201cLisa Frankenstein\u201d actually reminds me more of 2013\u2019s \u201cWarm Bodies\u201d than any version of \u201cFrankenstein\u201d I\u2019ve seen. If you want a movie where a science project with a tenuous relationship with their creator runs amok and falls in love, go see \u201cPoor Things,\u201d a nominee for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards. There\u2019s a movie that isn\u2019t afraid of an R rating, and it just comes off as more \u2013 this phrase seems particularly appropriate \u2013 comfortable in its body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLisa Frankenstein\u201d: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPoor Things\u201d: B<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLisa Frankenstein\u201d is rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, sexual content, language, sexual assault, teen drinking and drug content. Its running time is 101 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver I had high hopes for \u201cLisa Frankenstein,\u201d whose trailers promised a lead performance from Kathryn Newton (of the gleefully twisted body-switch horror-comedy \u201cFreaky\u201d) and a sick… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2636],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59145,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59143\/revisions\/59145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}