“All men aren’t created Evil,” and all movies aren’t created well. This is one of those movies. Anthony Leondis’ new CG animation, Igor, a cliché tale about a cliché horror movie character tries to be both a children’s movie and a dark comedy and ultimately fails at both.

Igor takes place in the imaginary land of Malaria, a once beautiful farming town turned gothic, Nightmare-Before-Christmas-esque by never ending diabolical cloud coverage. This town, now evil, however survives by hosting an annual mad science-fair where the vilest creations are showcased to a world held hostage by the threat of attack.

In Malaria, the social structure includes two castes of people: stereotypical evil -genius, mad scientists and their stereotypical hunchbacked assistants, called Igors (after the character in Universal’s Frankenstein).

It is at this point of the narration that we are introduced to the main character, a stereotypical hunchbacked assistant also named Igor (John Cusack). Unlike the others, our Igor aspires to be more than just a lowly-class assistant. He gets his chance when his scientist (John Cleese) gets killed in an experiment. Secretly, Igor gets to work creating an invention that will literally beat the opposition into submission, which is life naturally (Frankenstein). He enlists the help of two of his earlier creations, Scamper (Steve Buscemi), an immortal and suicidal rabbit and Brain (Sean Hayes), a robotic brain in a jar. Igor is successful in giving life to his ultimate monster, but come to find out, the creature, named Eva (Molly Shannon), isn’t evil.

Meanwhile, another scientist, Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard), who has won the most science fairs, plans on stealing Igor’s creation. The plot then lurches towards its conclusion with a love story, a conspiracy, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”, a happy ending, and the voice of Jay Leno.

There are some high points to this movie. John Cusack and Molly Shannon have chemistry, or at least their voices do, as do their characters Igor and Eva, which leads to a not-so-bad love story. Also, there’s some comedic value to Steve Buchemi’s character, Scamper. However, that’s about it.

Nothing else about this movie really stands out, which is due to some extent to the prevalent Hollywood idea that you can take any kind of cliché idea (like toys in Toy Story and fairy tales in Shrek) and create a successful parody in the form of a children’s CG cartoon. However, the only thing that Igor amounts to be is a laundry list of clichés associated with early monster horror movies. You have mad scientists, hunchbacks, an invisible man, a fly-man hybrid, a shrink ray, and a female character named both Jaclyn and Heidi. In addition, the basic ugly duckling, you-can-do-anything-if-you-try theme is ridiculously clichéd. Now there are plenty of successful movies made out of nothing more than a handful of clichés. The problem with these clichés is that none of them elicit any kind of response, be it laughter or sentimental nostalgia. Nothing, this is why Igor fails as a parody.

Igor also fails as a suitable children’s movie. Murder, death, suicide, and adultery, all very adult themes, are included in various degrees in this movie. There are also various degrees of dark and adult attempts at humor. To be fair, these are all things that children see on television every night, and the characters, voices, and animation, especially regarding Igor himself, are very kid appealing. Still, parents should be cautious of taking their younger children to this movie.

Igor is a charming and interesting idea for a movie that was poorly executed and doomed by a lack of depth and originality