'Frankenweenie' review: Tim Burton resurrects Disney dog

"Frankenweenie" centers on Victor Frankenstein (voiced by Charlie Tahan), an eccentric kid whose best friend is a bull terrier named Sparky. After Sparky's untimely end, Victor gets a ghoulish idea that involves grave-digging, a lightning storm and a Ben Franklinesque kite. The result: Sparky is good as new, save for the unsightly sewing job. Soon nearly every kid in the subdivision is off to the pet cemetery, but subsequent experiments turn out a little differently.

For all its dark shadings, though, "Frankenweenie" is so softhearted that it passes up the chance to confront real issues of death, mortality and grieving. It's a quintessential Burton film, but also more Disney than a lot of Disney films.

Tim Burton: a boy, his dog and a movie

Tim Burton's "Frankenweenie" features plenty of homages to classic monster movies -- those produced by Universal in the 1930s, atomic horror from the '50s; there's even a cameo from Christopher Lee as Dracula in one of England's Hammer productions.

But Burton made sure to note that the movie geek references were just window dressing for a very personal story about processing grief and coping with loss. ("Frankenweenie" concerns Victor Frankenstein, a young boy, who borrows a page from Mary Shelley's famous mad scientist to resurrect his beloved bull terrier, Sparky, after he's hit by a car.)

"I was a boy once," Burton, 54, said. "I had a dog. It was based on that first kind of pure relationship. It was quite unconditional, your first love in a way. He also had this thing called distemper -- they said he wasn't going to live for very long, and he ended up living quite a long time, but there was always this specter hanging over. You're a kid, you don't really understand it, but that's where the whole thing sort of stemmed from."

"Frankenweenie" was shot over 21 / 2 years inside a converted warehouse in East London. About 200 puppets -- including 16 Sparkys -- were manufactured for the production. -- Los Angeles Times