Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

As I’ve become more of a cinephile, I’ve wandered deeper into the movie world and watched some pretty obscure stuff. That has sometimes led to great success—like with Hundreds of Beavers, which is admittedly not that niche anymore—and sometimes it’s been terrible, like with Boys Go to Jupiter. Fortunately, today’s find was a good one, though I Am Frankelda—Mexico’s first independent stop-motion animated film—had its share of ups and downs.

From the jump, the animation was routinely amazing. The set pieces, unique fantastical qualities, and eye-popping colors were a treat, but I also had a hard time looking at the characters sometimes (especially Frankelda) because their faces and mouths moved in a very Adult Swim way. It didn’t look bad, but it was hard to take them seriously sometimes. The story was pretty interesting, and I’ll get to it in a minute, but I wanted to talk about the music first. I had no idea this was a musical, so not only was I surprised when the first song started, I was delighted by the songs! They nailed the dark fantasy sound, and the similarities to The Phantom of the Opera were much appreciated. I need to find these songs on Apple Music and add them to my library; there were some legitimately great ones there.

The story of I Am Frankelda was endless creative, but it seemed like the writers sometimes forgot they created the story and that it wasn’t all common knowledge. The world felt underexplained, and some ideas were a little underbaked. The lightning-fast pacing didn’t help—there was a side character who died literally 30 seconds after they were introduced, for example—which was annoying, because this world was truly captivating and I wanted to understand it better. The romance between Frankelda and Herneval was sweet, Procustes was a formidable villain, and the necessary balance between the real world and Topus Terrentus was a good catalyst for a really twisted, interesting plot. Both in the narrative and in the animation did I feel like I was seeing things I’d never seen before, but it felt like every time the movie got into a rhythm, it would rush or underexplain something and kill its momentum.

Given the circumstances of its creation, I Am Frankelda was a rousing success. The movie oozed with creativity and heart, but it was that same creativity and heart that sometimes got in the way. With better editing and script supervision, this could’ve been a masterpiece, but I’m still happy with what we got. Superb animation, music, and a new, dark, inventive story, and even with its rough edges, I Am Frankelda was a big surprise that I really enjoyed. I also think this could’ve kill as a stage musical, but maybe I only think that because anytime I hear a song in a movie, I’m trying to figure out how my choir could sing it. I totally thought that with a couple of the songs in this movie, so don’t be surprised when you hear “Tinta Invisible” at the next elementary school concert.