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In Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, in order to demonstrate that his monster is a sophisticated, civilised being, the Doktor has him sing and dance ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh goes one better: as Doktor Ken and his virgin bride prepare to consummate their union, from the depths of the night they hear the monster playing on the flute what sounds suspiciously like ‘Moon River’. Herr Doktor is thrown completely off his stroke; he's got it, but he can't flaunt it with that damn flautist.

Unlike Mel’s, Branagh's version isn't supposed to be funny. But after being touted as the new Laurence Olivier (Henry V) and the new Orson Welles, (Dead Again), ‘the new Mel Brooks’ is a mantle that might sit a little more comfortably. Branagh saws off choice cuts from your favourite movies, and pop videos, and fashion shoots, and TV commercials, and stitches them into an intellectual re-assessment. Impressively the hole he falls into is considerably greater than the sum of his parts. Despite the title, Mary Shelley would be hard put to recognise her Frankenstein in any of this: she would wonder why the family home has no furniture, being unfamiliar with the minimalist design style favoured by the fashionable metropolitan hotels where Branagh and his producer Francis Ford Coppolla stayed while cooking up this project; she would wonder why the sweeping staircase has no bannister, in direct contravention of the Geneva Municipal Building Code of 1781, and indeed why the story requires a monster, given that, long before he could throttle the life out of anyone, most of the family would have perished trying to get up the stairs after dark; she would be puzzled by the crazed Doktor von Branagh’s substitution of the creature’s ornate 19th century locutions for Oprahfied victimological psychobabble: ‘You gave me these emotions — but you didn’t tell me how to use them!’

At the beginning, you can see what Branagh’s up to: ‘The dawn of the Nineteenth Century,’ the screen reads. ‘A world on the brink of revolutionary change…’ We are in the midst of a wild sea storm: ‘All hands to the mast!’ Ah-ha! He’s trying to make the clichés real — and Romantic. But he can’t leave well alone, and he winds up — furiously trying to tie his shambling creation together — just like the Doktor: a stitch in time saves, nein?  But not always. We get lavish, lyrical Alpine vistas, and sudden jump-cuts and edits: The Sound of Music for the MTV crowd.  Every scene, every image is a pose. When the delirious Doktor recovers, he’s greeted by sunlight filtering through the vast cathedral gables of his dusty laboratory and, at the far end, Helena Bonham-Carter tickling the ivories — and, for a moment, you vaguely recognise the tune: ‘Only the crumbliest, flakiest choc’late…’ Outside, meanwhile, the scenic views get ever more extreme. The monster improbably demands a meeting on top of an Alpine glacier, and then sends Branagh over the edge — a multimillion dollar recreation of the old Morecambe & Wise joke: ‘How do you make a Swiss roll? Push him off Mont Blanc.’ How do you make a Swiss role? Ah, that’s a little trickier.

The kindest interpretation of this picture is that it’s a parable. Here’s Branagh, intelligent, scholarly, Shakespearean, and his lovely consort Helena, the English rose with the Merchant-Ivory complexion.

Together, they represent the best of English culture. Yet he forsakes her to live in a hovel with an inarticulate, shambling American who staggers about howling unintelligibly — in other words, Robert De Niro giving his well-known Robert De Niro impression. In the end, Branagh’s obsession with De Niro destroys him. Hmm. Maybe the whole picture’s an allegory for the British movie industry.
The Spectator, November 12th 1994