Asa Butterfield leads a charmingly stitched-together tale that’s spooky, silly and sincere
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
The perfect Halloween treat, writer-director Steven Hudson’s “Frankenstein”-ian creation “Stitch Head” also owes an obvious debt to Pixar’s classic “Monsters Inc.” However, the delightful CG-animated film, based on the novel by English author Guy Bass, is also a Mad Magazine-like mix of a mad-scientist-in-his-castle tale about creating a growing horde of marvelously varied monsters, a madcap circus film, a ditsy musical, and the coming-of-age story of a misunderstood monster boy learning to accept himself.
The boy is the eponymous Stitch Head (Asa Butterfield), and he appears to be made from several little boys (he notably resembles the work of the book’s illustrator, Pete Williamson). Stitch Head is kind and gentle and the leader of the other monsters by virtue of his, well, virtue. He makes certain they are all in bed when it’s time to sleep, and he reminds them to fear the “angry mob” that the villagers of Grubbers Nubbin will form if any of them gets out of the castle and frightens them.
The monsters recall not just “Monsters Inc.” They also resemble Muppets and the things Maurice Sendak created for “Where the Wild Things Are.” The Professor (Rob Brydon), whose laboratory resembles the one created by electrician Kenneth Strickfaden for James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (1931), completes his latest creation, known as Creature (Joel Fry, “Cruella”). Stich Head doubles in these scenes as the Professor’s Igor. The creature is big and hairy with three arms (one human), a pointy head, an alligator-like tail, a single giant eye, and he goes on a “monster rampage,” like all before him, leaving holes in the shape of his body through crumbling Castle Groteskew’s walls. Among the other creations are The Deranged, The Repugnant and a talking shark-like thing named Steve.
One day, a traveling carnival arrives in Grubbers Nubbin, where a little girl named Arabella (Tia Bannon) spies on the castle on top of the nearby mountain peak through binoculars. The carnival’s ringleader is the elaborately mustachioed Fulbert Freakfinder (Seth Usdenov), a greedy showman who believes “monsters mean money.” Freakfinder even sings the song “Are You Ready for Monsters?” composed like the rest of the jaunty score by Nick Urata (“Paddington,” “Little Miss Sunshine”). The film’s other song, “Make ‘Em Scream,” is a take off on the reportedly plagiarized Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown tune “Make “Em Laugh” from the 1952 classic “Singin’ in the Rain.”
In addition to the angry mob and mad scientist’s laboratory, “Stitch Head” is replete with “Frankenstein” tropes. We get creatures longing to be accepted among human society, a boy creature bonding with a human girl character, an unscrupulous showman looking to benefit from freaks and two “monsters”—Stitch Head and Creature—declaring themselves “bestus best friends.” Freakfinder transforms Stitch Head into a money-making attraction dubbed “the Ghoul of Grotteskew.”
Brydon’s Professor and Usdenov’s Freakfinder are the film’s most vocally flamboyant characters, and they bolster the film’s theme that humans are the true monsters. It is Stitch Head’s Sisyphean task to re-brick the walls broken through by monsters, recalling Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” In one scene, Stitch Head wears a bag over his face, evoking the ghost boy from J.A. Bayona’s frightening modern classic, “The Orphanage” (another film for Halloween).
The CG animation is visually clever and at times even Buster Keaton-like, especially in a death-defying sequence involving a hot air balloon and the unforgettable Statue-of-Liberty-staged climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 classic “Saboteur.” Get ready for a musical cue from “2001 A Space Odyssey” and a lunar evocation of “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.” The film ends on a sweet note. Cue Air Supply’s “I’m All Out of Love.” Take your kids to “Stitch Head” for a Halloween they will never forget.
‘Stitch Head’
Rating: PG for action, thematic elements and mild rude humor
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry, Rob Brydon
Director: Steve Hudson
Writers: Hudson, Guy Bass
Running time: 89 Minutes
Where to Watch: In theaters
Grade: A-
Boston Movie News 