A monstrosity whose very existence defies God and all laws of nature — the film, I mean.

Honestly, I could not in good faith not write about this movie. It’s as if poor Kenneth Branaugh wanted to shout to the whole world, “Really, people, I’m not Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles! So get off my back!!” Yet even that still doesn’t explain how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to pass. To say nothing of Coppola’s production involvement or that quiet screenplay credit by Frank Darabont, was Kenneth Branaugh forced into this by the divorce court judge to settle up with Emma Thompson or something?

Let’s see — it starts with Branaugh, 34 at the time, playing teenaged whiz kid Victor Frankenstein in the Swiss countryside, the son of a brilliant doctor (Ian Holm) and a mother that looks about Branaugh’s age, who happens to be pregnant. He an his pregnant mother then dance to the family harpsichordist in the ballroom and mom faints, only to die during childbirth. Cue a scene three years later, Victor’s bearded now, and he goes to his mother’s grave site (a smaller Washington Monument, really, in the Swiss Alps) and says, “Mother, you should not have died. No one should ever have to die!!!” Now, that, my friends, is what they call “motivation.”

Ok, so sometime later he meets John Cleese, who, I shit you not, is a brilliant doctor who has learned how to stitch dead humans back together again as living creatures. Traumatized by the experience, Dr. Fawlty refuses to share with Victor his diaries. Thankfully, he’s knifed to death by someone, giving Victor the opportunity ten minutes later to read through his diaries and retrieve the secrets.

Needing a body, he walks out of his lab-or-a-tory, and wouldn’t you know it, Fawlty’s killer (Robert DeNiro, with a cockney accent in Switzerland for some reason) is hanging on the gallows ten feet outside its doorway.

Skipping ahead some, the monster becomes, of course, a kindly soul who teaches himself to read, counsels blind men and brings families potatoes. Unfortunately, no one can look at a hideous figure without immediately assuming he must be a killer. So, for some reason, he decides to become one, killing Frankenstein’s little brother in the forest one day. And, of course, the murder is pinned on the harpsichordist who is hanged, literally, on the spot, before anyone can verify she even did it. (as an aside, am I the only one who thinks that angry mobs just haven’t had the same verve since The Simpsons began?)

It’s at this point, I’ll admit that I fell asleep on the couch. But upon waking up, I discovered that Frankenstein’s love, Helena Bonham Carter, has also died somehow (tragically, no doubt), and the monster wants Victor to make him a beautiful lady monster. He does so, there’s some fighting over whose lady monster she really is, and eventually the monster Carter burns herself alive so no one can have her.

The whole thing ends with Victor and the monster hitching a ride on a Shackleton-esque boat trip to the North Pole, where ultimately, they are engulfed in flames on a funeral pyre on some iceberg as the ship sails off. Why? I have no idea.

I dare not suggest that Ms. Shelley might be rolling in her grave. But the film’s stink factor–the overacting, the senseless script, the overall aesthetic, even–is appallingly high, esp. for someone of Branaugh’s considerable talents, even if it’s not exactly genius. Still, let it not be said that he wasn’t channelling another famous director with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s just that it was Ed Wood or even Joel Schumacher this time. Woof.