Igor (film) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Igor
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tony Leondis
Produced by	John D. Eraklis Max Howard
Written by	Chris McKenna
Starring	John Cusack Steve Buscemi Jay Leno Eddie Izzard Sean Hayes Arsenio Hall Jennifer Coolidge John Cleese Molly Shannon Christian Slater
Music by	Patrick Doyle
Cinematography	Dominique Monfery
Editing by	Hervé Schneid
Studio	Exodus Film Group
Distributed by	MGM Distribution Co. (United States) TFM Distribution (France)
Release date(s)	September 19, 2008 (2008-09-19) (United States) December 17, 2008 (2008-12-17) (France) September 9, 2009 (2009-09-09) (Brazil)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United States France
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Money made	$30.7 million

Igor is a 2008 computer-animated horror comedy film directed by Tony Leondis from a screenplay by Chris McKenna. Igor, developed and produced by Max Howard with the California-based Exodus Film Group, was the first feature-length animated film to be financed with private equity. The animation was completed at France's Sparx Animation Studios and a facility in Vietnam. It was distributed in North America by MGM Distribution Co. and internationally by The Weinstein Company. It is MGM's first fully computer-animated film as well as the studio's first animated film in twelve years following 1996's All Dogs Go to Heaven 2.

Igor stars John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Jay Leno, Eddie Izzard, Sean Hayes, Arsenio Hall, Jennifer Coolidge, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, and Christian Slater. Conceived by McKenna as a twisting of evil scientist film tropes, Igor features Cusack as the titular Igor, who lives in the kingdom of Malaria where others of his kind serve as assistants to evil scientists. In trying to achieve his dream to become an evil scientist, Igor accidentally creates a sweet female monster named Eva.

Igor's first teaser trailer premiered at the 2008 New York Comic-Con before being released online on May 7, 2008. Promoted with a video game, toys, books, comic books, and fast-food tie-ins, Igor premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on September 13, 2008, before starting its American nationwide theatrical run five days later. The film received mixed reviews from film critics and grossed $30.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. Igor garnered an Annie Award nomination for Valérie Hadida's character design.

Plot

Setting

The Kingdom of Malaria was once a peaceful land of farmers until its environment was devastated by a mysterious storm that never ended and killed all of its plantation, thus driving its inhabitants into poverty. In response to this calamity, King Malbert (Jay Leno) initiated a plan to save the country by having the kingdom's best and most wicked scientists create various doomsday devices and blackmail the rest of the world into paying them by threatening to unleash these devices upon the world. As a result, Malaria became a dark country where evil reigned supreme. There is also an annual Evil Science Fair that takes place in an arena known as the Kiliseum, where the inventions fight one another while being broadcast to the rest of the planet. Also, while evil scientists are treated as celebrities, citizens with hunchbacks are treated as second-class, usually referred to by the derogatory name "Igor", and are often employed as lowly minions for these scientists.

One Igor (John Cusack), however, is a talented inventor who aspires to be an evil scientist himself. Among his inventions are his friends Scamper (Steve Buscemi), a re-animated immortal rabbit and Brain (Sean Hayes), an unintelligent robot with a human brain transplanted into a life support jar. Unfortunately, he must to keep his talent a secret out of fear of being sent to the Igor recycling plant, especially from his master, the incompetent Doctor Glickenstein (John Cleese). Meanwhile, another evil scientist named Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) becomes immensely popular due to winning several Evil Science Fairs in a row. In truth, he always steals the prize-winner from another scientist before the fair with help of his shape-shifting girlfriend, Jaclyn (Jennifer Coolidge), and desires to overthrow King Malbert and rule Malaria as its new king.

Main Story

One day, Glickenstein is visited by his "girlfriend" Heidi (who is actually Jaclyn in disguise attempting to steal his plans), giving Igor aspirations of romance. After throwing out Heidi, Glickenstein ignores Igor's concerns of using better parts for his latest invention, which is a rocket ship that malfunctions and explodes, taking Glickenstein with it. At this same moment, King Malbert arrives to see Glickenstein and demand that he build an invention that could defeat Schadenfreude, who Malbert fears will replace him as king due to his popularity. Unable to tell the truth of Glickenstein's death and seizing the opportunity, Igor boldly claims that Glickenstein is creating life, which greatly pleases Malbert, who proclaims that such an invention would make its creator the greatest evil scientist of all time. After the king leaves, Igor reveals to Scamper and Brain his project to create a huge and monstrous being from human remains.

With Brain and Scamper's help, he assembles the giant, and adds an "evil bone" that will make it pure evil. It first seems his experiment failed but seconds later, the monster, which turns out to be female, reveals to have been revived and later escapes. They later find the giantess in an orphanage playing with blind orphans. At the same time, Schadenfreude sneaks into Glickenstein's castle to steal his invention, but he not only discovers that Glickenstein is dead, but his Igor had created a living monster, which he believes will be his key to taking the throne.

Igor manages to lead the giant back to the castle with flowers that she likes. There, he discovers that the evil bone he gave her was not activated, making the monster sweet, friendly and gentle despite being hideous. Igor attempts to activate the evil bone by commanding the monster to kill a fly, but she instead catches it and sets it outside. Igor tries to convince the monster that she is evil but fails as the gentle giantess misinterpreted it as “Eva" (Molly Shannon) thinking that's the name he gave her. Igor later attempts to brainwash Eva into becoming evil by bringing her to a brainwashing salon. Brain also decides to get his brain cleaned and to watch TV but breaks the remote to his TV, so he takes the remote from Eva's room and, in an attempt to change the channel, inadvertently changes the monster's TV channel from a horror movie marathon to a talk show whose topic of the day is the history of acting. She ends up watching the talk show for several hours and upon leaving the salon, she can speak proper English and aspires to be an actress.

Igor then reluctantly takes his creation back to the castle in their car, bemoaning his failures. On the way back to the castle, Schadenfreude chases after Igor attempts to steal Eva by using a shrink ray, only to fail and end up shrinking himself. Igor and his friends nearly go over a cliff, but Eva saves them all, showing her appreciation of all life. Brain then brags on about how he changed the channel for Eva's TV, thus admitting that he made her what she is. Upon learning this, Igor attempts to kill Brain with an axe in anger for ruining his monster. When Eva questions this, Scamper sarcastically tells her they're practicing for a play and the monster believes that they're performers. Igor then gets the idea to exhibit Eva at the science fair while lying to her that the fair is an "Annie" audition with a few differences. While helping Eva with the “play”, Igor slowly starts to fall for his monster, who tries to convince her creator that its always better to be good than evil, no matter how much more successful evil is.

Dr. Schadenfreude takes Igor to his home and attempts to blackmail him into giving him Eva by threatening to reveal Glickenstein's doom to King Malbert. Igor escapes, but is too late to stop Schadenfreude from exposing Igor to the King who sends him to an "Igor Recycling Plant". Schadenfreude tricks Eva into coming with him by having Heidi (Glickenstein's "girlfriend" who is revealed to be Jaclyn in disguise) pretend to kiss Igor.

At the fair, Schadenfreude once again manipulates Eva into striking him, activating her evil bone and turning her into a mindless killing machine. He unleashes the monster on the Science Fair where she destroys all the Evil Inventions whilst singing Annie's "Tomorrow". Brain and Scamper help Igor escape from the plant and learn that Malbert had deliberately killed Malaria's crops with a weather ray that created the storm clouds so he could implement his "Evil Inventions" plan, thereby keeping himself in power. Rushing into the arena, Igor tries to reason with the enraged Eva while Brain and Scamper power down the weather ray. Eva roars furiously at Igor until the sunlight begins to shine once again on Malaria, which permanently deactivates her evil bone and returning to her sweet and gentle self.

The crowd boos at Malbert for his treachery before the damaged weather ray falls and crushes him to death. Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to take power, but Eva humiliates him. The monarchy has been dissolved and Malaria becomes a republic with Igor as the president. Schadenfreude is then relegated to pickle salesman and for Jaclyn, who's revealed to be a female Igor, a pretzel saleswoman (while she begins to have feelings for Schadenfreude's Igor) while the annual science fair becomes an annual musical theatre showcase. Igor reveals his plan to build a dog to Eva, with the giantess remarking that they'll just adopt if it doesn't work out. Igor and Eva live happily together as Malaria becomes a better place.

Voice cast

• John Cusack as Igor, a short hunchback who aspires to be an evil scientist.
• Molly Shannon as Eva, the hideous, yet sweet monster Igor makes using human remains, that aspires to be an actress. She is mostly based on Frankenstein’s Monster
• Steve Buscemi as Scamper, an immortal rabbit.
• Sean Hayes as Brain, an unintelligent sentient preserved human brain in a jar. Scamper teases Brain by calling him "Brian". When Eva gives him a sticker, the word "Brain" is spelled right.
• Jennifer Coolidge as Jaclyn/Heidi, Dr. Schadenfreude's shapeshifting girlfriend who helps him steal other scientists' inventions.
• Eddie Izzard as Dr. Schadenfreude, a fraudulent, yet flamboyant rival scientist that takes credit for other evil scientists' inventions.
• Jay Leno as King Malbert
• Arsenio Hall as Carl Cristall, an invisible talk show host that wears anything but pants.
• Christian Slater as Dr. Schadenfreude's Igor
• John Cleese as Dr. Glickenstein, a tedious-minded inventor and Igor's master.
• Paul Vogt as Buzz Offmann
• James Lipton as Himself
• Jess Harnell as Announcer, Royal Guard #2

Music

Leondis first met Patrick Doyle, one of his favorite film composers, about Igor in October 2007; Leondis showed Doyle the film without music as well as concept drawings, which got the composer "immediately excited." Due to having themes for different types of characters, Igor's score incorporates multiple styles, such as piano concerto for Eva's theme and a tango tinge for Dr. Schadenfreude's dance-y side. Leondis instructed Doyle to give the score a "slightly eastern feel," offering him the works of composers such as Bela Bartok to reference from. The score's Gothic elements were executed through a set of Choir samples. The soundtrack also includes five Louis Prima songs. The soundtrack was released on September 30, 2008 by Varèse Sarabande. "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield was featured in the film's end credits, but not included on the soundtrack.

Images for kids

• 

  Igor writer Chris McKenna came up with the idea of a twist on scientist horror films in 1998.

• 

  Igor premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on September 13, 2008.

See also

In Spanish: Igor (película) para niños