Stream It or Skip It: ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ on Peacock, a Monster Mashup Comedy from Diablo Cody

Time to check in on Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning Juno scripter and United States of Tara creator who penned new ’80s-throwback high-school horror-com Lisa Frankenstein (now streaming on Peacock, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video). It’s her first notable gig since writing 2018’s Tully (terribly underrated, along with her other Charlize Theron movie, Young Adult), and, well, it probably won’t rank among her best. It’s a so-so directorial debut from Zelda Williams (son of Robin Williams), who doesn’t quite make the most of a fully committed Kathryn Newton performance and some Very Diablo Cody Dialogue. It might be worth a watch anyway, but let’s wait until we work through things and get to the bottom of this review before we come to any definitive judgments, OK? 

LISA FRANKENSTEIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: BEAUTY PRODUCTS. All over the bathroom. Lisa Swallows (Newton) crimps and teases and sprays her hair, and certainly laments being named Lisa Swallows, which just seems cruel of Cody. Lisa’s hair is big, because it’s 1989, and she establishes a plot device when her stepsis Taffy (Liza Soberano) lets her use her tanning bed out back in the tanning bed shed. It’s on the fritz, the tanning bed, and it might just zap you. Lisa’s sad story is, her mom was killed by an ax murderer two years ago, and her dad (Joe Chrest) remarried to a serial aerobicizing rhymes-with-ditch (Carla Gugino) with a Junior Miss Hawaiian Tropic cheerleader daughter. Lisa barely spoke a word for a long time after her mom died. Now, she’s the new kid in school for her senior year and she’s an outcast and life sucks platypus buttholes through a bendy straw with a hole in it.

One night Taffy takes Lisa to a party, where she drinks something spiked with a substance that makes her hurl and get groped by a shithead classmate and dream about being the Bride of Frankenstein. That same night, a storm hits and something weird happens at the nearby Bachelors Grove Cemetery, ball lightning or something. This is the same cemetery where Lisa hangs out, crushing on a stone bust on top of the grave of a cadaver that’s pushing 200 years old, but was maybe 23 when it first went in there. She hung her mother’s rosary on it for some reason, possibly because the plot needed her to, since the lightning phenomenon zapped it and awakened the dead hunk (Cole Sprouse). And now he staggers through Lisa’s window to return the rosary and barf worms and various ’pedes on the carpet. 

But! He’s a nice guy, the dead guy. Kinda sweet for being a zombie. She cleans him up and puts him in a Violent Femmes tee, and he looks like an undead Nick Cave. And since this is a movie paying homage to ’80s movies, she can hide him in her closet and nobody will notice. Lisa’s inspired to come out of her shell, so she starts dressing like the slutty goth queen of Benevolence, Rhode Island – and kinda draws attention from her not-undead crush Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry). Thing is, Corpse Guy is missing an ear and a hand, and when Evil Stepmom threatens to have Lisa committed, he might know just where he can find some spare parts.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Weird, how I managed to watch Lisa Frankenstein and Poor Things as an unplanned double-feature today. Not weird, how Lisa Frankenstein doesn’t really warrant a comparison to Poor Things outside its Mary Shelley inspirations. Otherwise, Lisa tries to draft on Cody’s hated-at-the-time-but-now-beloved Jennifer’s Body, and is a lot like I-dated-a-zombie can’t-get-the-mixed-genre-thing-quite-right February-release comedy Warm Bodies, with some Tim Burton (think Edward Scissorhands) and John Hughes (think Pretty in Pink crossed with Weird Science) thrown in. 

Performance Worth Watching: Newton is absolutely game for this nice-girl-goes-dark arc, but the screenplay never brings Lisa into tight enough focus to allow for any particularly insightful character work. 

Memorable Dialogue: Lisa: “I can’t just get you new parts. You’re a dead man, not a Chrysler LeBaron.”

Sex and Skin: A teensy bit of naughtiness that tells me this movie should’ve been R-rated instead of declawed for a PG-13.

Our Take: Lisa Swallows has an increasingly intimate relationship with death, but Lisa Frankenstein fails to develop and capitalize on that arc. In its attempt to be an ’80s homage/spoof, a high school coming-of-ager, a campy horror-comedy and a rom-com, the movie loses sight of its protagonist, and therefore its primary emotional hook. Lisa’s transition from bereaved to cuckoo-bananas occurs not because it emerges naturally from the character and situation, but because the screenplay dictates it. I enjoyed Newton in this mildly deranged role, but was left with the nagging feeling that it could have explored her psychology better. That it could have made Sprouse’s reanimated dude more than just a plot device. That it could have made everyone just a little more deranged. That it could have leaned into hyperbole a bit more, drawing out the satire. That it could have been sexier and meaner and nastier and less toothlessly PG-13.

Occasionally leaping out of the screenplay are a half-dozen or so big-laugh lines that go a long way towards smoothing over its tonal and structural dysfunction. That’s Cody’s strength: snarky pop-culture references and withering one-liners that suddenly take you out at the knees. But other stabs at comedy – misc. slapstick, a piss-take fashion montage, ironic deployment of an REO Speedwagon ballad – go splat. Williams’ direction is turgid, lacking the bracing snap of crisp comic timing. And we’re left with a movie that tries to do too much and doesn’t make us laugh often enough to distract from its flaws. You can’t tell if it’s trying to make fun of something or engage our hearts and actually be something; it’s a farce that falls in the chasm between those two conceits. 

Our Call: The more I think about Lisa Frankenstein, the more the shine of a handful of decent laughs wears off. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.