'Frankenstein' remake a monstrous mess

First, let's get the Frankenstein-related opening paragraphs out of the way.

1. Even the Hoover Dam couldn't supply enough electricity to bring the dead material in this movie to life.

2. Forget a brain for the monster. Nobody in this movie needs one.

3. Like Frankenstein's new creature, this movie stumbles about, never finding its footing or knowing what direction to go.

There might have been some hope for Paul McGuigan's Guy Ritchie-inspired "Victor Frankenstein" had Max "American Ultra" Landis' revisionist screenplay been mounted as a bold and blatant black comedy.

Some of the lines from James McAvoy's Victor Frankenstein are quite comedic.

Take the time he tells his assistant Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) that they're on the verge of something.

"What?" Igor screeches. "Being electrocuted? Chased by monsters? Hunted by the police?"

"Well," Frankenstein snippily retorts, "if you're going to concentrate on the dark side!"

See?

Hilariously underplayed British humor. This Frankenstein parties in London.

Landis attempts to pump fresh blood into "Victor Frankenstein" by having Igor narrate the tale as a memoir of sorts. This begs the question, how could Igor report on events that occurred while he was unconscious?

The movie begins with poor Igor lamenting his fate as a hunchback with not even a name. He can only find employment as a lowly circus clown abused and denigrated by his fellow performers.

But underneath that clown makeup rests the intellectual brain of a medical student fascinated by the skeletal structure and musculature of the human body.

One night at the circus, Igor meets "the man who would change my life forever!"

Frankenstein is in the audience when a trapeze artist (and Igor's secret crush) Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay) falls to the ground, suffocating from rearranged body parts cutting off her oxygen. Igor saves her life.

The doctor, impressed with the hunchback's knowledge of physiology, instantly wants Igor to be his partner.

First, he helps Igor escape his indentured servitude at the circus by running and jumping in slow motion.

Good thing that manhole cover in the floor of the big top connects directly to downtown London.

Now wanted for murder (please don't ask), Igor joins Frankenstein at his laboratory where the doctor discovers the hunchback doesn't have a hunch at all, just a giant cyst that can easily and painfully be drained.

And is.

Now able to stand up, cut his hair, shave and look good, Igor enters high London society where he runs into a superfluous and improbable romantic subplot: The recovered Lorelei now works as an escort for a proper gentleman.

Surprisingly, Landis' take on the Mary Shelley tale doesn't spend much time on the monster's creation, a noisy, violent, confusing scene hurriedly dispensed with in the final act.

Landis prefers to turn "Victor Frankenstein" into an intriguing but never fully explored smackdown between science, represented by the hubris of Frankenstein, and religion, represented by relentless Scotland Yard Inspector Turpin (Andrew Scott) out to stop the "sinful" abomination of a man playing God.

"You toy with wrathful forces!" Turpin tells Frankenstein.

Yet, they are neither coherent nor compelling ones.

“Victor Frankenstein”

★ ½

Starring: James McEvoy, Daniel Radcliffe, Jessica Brown Findlay, Andrew Scott, Freddie Fox

Directed by: Paul McGuigan

Other: A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 109 minutes