You is likely to be shocked by this surprising crossover between Stranger Issues and Frankenstein that you simply by no means realized you wanted. One in every of Netflix’s hidden gems is a half-hour mockumentary launched in 2019 that’s half PBS Masterpiece Theater and half Orson Welles vainness present parody starring David Harbour (Thunderbolts*).
Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein hits that nostalgia for watching public broadcasting together with your grandma whereas sitting on plastic-wrapped couches and consuming arduous sweet. Really, whereas watching it, it felt like I obtained drop-kicked into that core childhood reminiscence. David Harbour performs himself as David Harbour the third, who finds his father David Harbour Jr.’s (who he additionally performs) Frankenstein-inspired challenge. Experiencing daddy points, Harbour III grapples with an existential disaster introduced on by his mad genius dad’s love for the theater over, maybe, his personal son. I can’t stress how unseriously severe everyone seems to be on this, particularly Harbour, who relishes the larger-than-life film star that was his fake-real father.
Full with a dramatic made-for-TV music rating, the mockumentary (directed by Daniel Grey Longino and written by John Levenstein) follows David Harbour’s journey in unpacking his dad’s life work and love for the stage. The TV play inside the particular chronicles the Welles-esque capitulation into promoting oneself out whereas greedy for another creative success.
The play we watch all through the mockumentary has that PBS TV station filter lighting and the weirdest plot. Frankenstein, the physician (Harbour), invitations over an alluring potential investor, Miss Macbeth (Kate Berlant), to fund constructing one other monster. His assistant Sal (Alex Ozero as ’80s heartthrob Joey Vallejo) poses because the physician whereas the actual physician poses because the monster (or does he), which hen all of a sudden it cuts to an advert for a steak restaurant Harbour Jr. is endorsing whereas consuming his emotions of jealousy towards Vallejo—a feud that will have led to Harbour Jr. slicing the brakes of his competitors’s automobile.
Yeah, it’s undoubtedly convoluted in that Grownup Swim fashion of surreal humor however on Netflix, very similar to the Kristen Bell homicide thriller farce The Girl within the Home Throughout the Road From the Lady within the Window.
It’s so meta, and for that cause we expect it’s a must-watch this season main into the discharge of Guillermo Del Toro’s genuine Frankenstein characteristic for the streamer and Stranger Issues season 5. Harbour is unquestionably having enjoyable as a lumbering star of the stage {that a} mere televised particular can’t comprise. There are even interstitials of him proclaiming, “That’s how I obtained into Juilliard!” on his mentor’s Contained in the Actor’s Studio-fashion faculty of appearing program.
The kicker? His mentor is performed by Alfred Molina, who’s relegated to being a sea captain of few phrases on Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein. It’s so unhinged to see the nice actor simply present up for kicks.
The random nature of the particular inside the present leaves you with so many extra questions than solutions. Take, as an example, Harbour making an attempt to rationalize an irrational man who is totally made up after which being that very man who performed two different males. I threw my fingers up within the air so many instances as a result of it was simply so ridiculous. Was he taking part in Frankenstein, the physician pretending to be Frankenstein the creature? Or was he Frankenstein, the creature pretending to be his creator to get the funding to make a mate? The galaxy mind that went into that is astounding.
After watching it, it grew to become essentially the most quoted factor round my home or when watching films. The “Chekhov’s Gun” gun, referred to as out upon introduction within the first act (“It has to go off within the final!”), grew to become one thing I consider after I watch films to assessment. However essentially the most inside joke that lives on needs to be “And that’s how I obtained into Juilliard!”
We chatted with Harbour about it in 2023, which was earlier than the discharge of his portrayal of Frankenstein for James Gunn’s Creature Commandos for DC Studios; he regaled us together with his greatest Harbour Jr. and mentioned why he was drawn to Mary Shelley’s creation: “Probably the most fascinating factor to me about Frankenstein’s monster generally is that he was created to be this type of erudite, mental, romantic, good individual, and he winds up being a monster. I imply, that complexity could make for some fairly ripe comedy and likewise pathos—{that a} man who considers himself one factor is considered by others as one thing very totally different.”
Ponder his tackle the monster, the person behind the monster, and his personal father behind the person that David Harbour would go on to grow to be earlier than Hopper’s return on Stranger Issues season 5 within the clip beneath for a style.
Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein is streaming on Netflix.
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