Lisa Frankenstein
By K G Kline
One of the hottest film writers of the 1980's was Dan Waters. At the age of 26 he shot straight to the A-List in 1988 with "Heathers", one of the 80's best comedies. Its hysterical portrayal of teen angst, peer pressure, and high school bigotry was only bettered by Christian Slater's unashamedly obvious Jack Nicholson impersonation. With his first swing Waters had knocked John Hughes ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off") to the mat and body-slammed him butt first. Waters followed up his freshman success by penning Tim Burton's "Batman Returns", where he famously gave Catwoman the lines to call out Batman as a male chauvinist pig. We saw Batman one way, Waters saw him another, and damn if he wasn't right. As Archie Bunker sang, "Those Were the Days".
Fast forward to 2024 and the new film "Lisa Frankenstein" from first-time director Zelda Williams (Robin Williams’ daughter) and a script by Diablo Cody. (Juno). Cody was born in 1979, too late to have seen "Heathers" or "Batman Returns" in their original releases, or to have understood that those films had an all-important connection to the social issues of the times. I'm sure Cody has seen them, but watching them twenty years later means seeing them out of context. The comedy is there, but the commentary is lost.
Waters' influence can be seen all over "Lucy Frankenstein". Set in 1989 it's fully immersed in 80's kitsch, but like the film itself, the setting is widely uneven. "Lisa Frankenstein" isn't a tribute to 80's teen comedies so much as a fanboy regurgitation penned in the 2020's by someone who was too young to understand them back then. Cody's script is amateurish, self-indulgent, and unlike Dan Waters, not at all funny.
Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is a damaged high school senior whose mother was the victim of a nameless psycho axe murderer. Her father has remarried, giving the film its stereotypical evil stepmother (Carla Gugino). Lisa also picked up a new stepsister Taffy (Lisa Soberano) along the way. Lisa vents her PTSD by hanging out at the local cemetery, fantasizing over the grave of a handsome young man who died in 1839.
At the film's opening it's more "Buffy '' than "Beetlejuice,” but not as clever as either. When a freak electrical storm results in lightning striking the young man's grave The Creature (Cole Sprouce) shows up at Lisa's house looking like a dancer from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, and Lisa quickly hides him away in her closet. In most 80's teen films this would result in an unlikely but adorable love affair (think "Teen Wolf") with the innocent damsel stopping at nothing to save her hunky but possessed boyfriend.
Not this time. Cody throws in a completely unnecessary love triangle in the form of another hunky boy who has caught Lisa's attention. This marks the film's first serious derailment, but there will be more to come. Lisa quickly devolves into the kind of malicious, stuck-up teen bitch that usually became the victim in these kinds of films. Her wardrobe transforms into a carbon-copy of Bellatrix from "Harry Potter" (wrong decade), and worse, the film stops being a romantic comedy and turns into a rather malicious slasher film with our heroine holding the knife.
I'm not sure what Diablo Cody was going for here. Possibly after dipping a toe into "Heathers" oh-so-deep waters she realized she couldn't indulge in its witty social commentary in a film set 35 years ago - completely severing her from the real reason Dan Waters wrote "Heathers" and "Batman Returns" in the first place. Without loveable characters or a message "Lisa Frankenstein" ends up as a widely uneven and uncharming indulgence desperately needing a script that actually embraces 80's cinema.
K G Kline is a local actor, playwright, and regular guest on It's Move Time and Cinema Classics.