‘The Bride!’ Is a Feminist Fantasia Update on Frankenstein That Descends Into a Monstrous Mess

“The Bride!,” the new Hollywood movie about Frankenstein’s betrothed, merits its exclamation point. A mashup of horror, comedy, musical, crime drama, and more besides, the film revels in excess and extravagant ambition, with writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal taking the big budget she was given by Warner Brothers — which reportedly ended up close to $100 million — and going for broke.In theory, the patchwork of different genres works for a picture based on a book about a creature borne from different parts, with its hybridization also mirroring the 1935 classic flick “Bride of Frankenstein” on which it is very loosely based. Yet the blending of various genres requires careful control, or at least an appealing irreverence. Unlike its filmic progenitor, the latest version lacks finesse and the spark of life that melds the action, comedy, horror, and musical elements together to create something unique and thrilling. It doesn’t help that Ms. Gyllenhaal ends up resisting all genres, never committing to or showing an affinity for any cinematic mode except that of feminist fantasia.Oscillating between mild entertainment and angry gestures, the film feels like a cross between “Barbie” and “The Joker,” which is probably how it was pitched to studio executives and what got them to dig into the coffers. The lavish colorfully “vintage” imagery and evocative art direction reflect both a top-notch creative team and high production values, echoing the recent version of “Frankenstein” by Guillermo del Toro. No amount of sets can substitute for story though, and ultimately “The Bride!” suffers from too much stitching and not enough finishing touches, despite skilled performances from Oscar-nominated Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”) and Christian Bale. The structural problems begin immediately with a black-and-white prologue featuring Ms. Buckley as Mary Shelley in which the author speaks about how her “Frankenstein” novel didn’t tell the full story, and how she suffers from a certain duality of mind and a tumor, the latter of which is true and comes off in poor taste. This opening then leads to 1936 Chicago, and we see a young woman named Ida (also Ms. Buckley) hanging out with gangsters. Soon, Ida starts spouting pseudo-poetic gibberish, sometimes in a British accent as if Shelley lives within her, as well as statements incriminating her friends, which eventually lead to her demise. Though intriguing, these early scenes cue us into how the film will force feed its artistic pretension and theme of sexism into the gullet of its unfortunate heroine.The appearance of Mr. Bale as Frankenstein and Annette Bening as Dr. Euphronious lightens things up a bit. Showing up at her office residence, he tells the somewhat disreputable doctor that he has lived for over 100 years, a century filled with desolation due to his inability to find a lover owing to his grotesque visage. Convincing her to attempt to revive a recently dead body, similar to what was done on him, they use Ida’s corpse to create a mate for him, though the “electrical revivification” is not half as memorable as it was in the original James Whale movies. Once reborn, Ida continues her semi-literary sputtering of words, synonyms, and phrases, spasms of verbiage and vulgarity akin to someone with Tourette syndrome. She also sports permanent black stains on the right side of her mouth and a shock of white hair. Naturally, Frankenstein falls hard for her, and so begins the film’s chronicle of their love affair and, after he kills two men who assault her, their fugitive status. Their going on the lam takes them to New York, Niagara Falls, and other places in a “Bonnie and Clyde”-like jaunt, pursued by detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard (Ms. Gyllenhaal’s husband) and Penélope Cruz. To say that the pursuit plot and Ida’s gangland connection prove unsatisfying and banal is putting it lightly, despite the story’s integration of feminist perspectives. The director even shows how Ida/The Bride inspires a social phenomenon in which women paint their mouths black and push back against male brutality and the patriarchy, though again she does so almost as an afterthought to align her movie with “The Joker,” with which it also shares a few craftsmen and women, such as cinematographer Lawrence Sher.Occasionally, moments of humor, beauty, and tenderness pop up amidst the violence and righteous anger, such as when the pair crash a fancy New York party and act as waiters. For the most part, though, the script’s attempts at levity and wit fail, with dialogue alternating between erudite if pretentious allusions (Melville’s “I would prefer not to” line from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is one example) and self-conscious bids at contemporary relevance. There’s even a mention of “#MeToo” that will likely have viewers, however sympathetic they may be to that movement, rolling their eyes instead of cheering.I haven’t yet addressed the dance sequences and recreations of movie musicals featuring Ms. Gyllenhaal’s brother Jake, whose film star character Frankenstein idolizes. Both of these are tiresome, despite Mr. Gyllenhaal’s handsomeness in a tux and pleasant, if a tad flat, singing in the old Hollywood homages. Like much else of the movie, these scenes point to how the director imagines she’s being clever and self-aware, yet what they and the entire enterprise truly reflect is her grandiloquent ego and hubris. Stripped bare of its affections and social implications, “The Bride!” turns out to be just another case of ambition exceeding talent.

‘The Bride!’ Is a Feminist Fantasia Update on Frankenstein That Descends Into a Monstrous Mess

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