Even those without a soft spot for old-fashioned monster movies will recognize that the animated feature Igor manages to squander a rather ingenious premise. The story takes place in a fictional land populated primarily by mad scientists and their Igors -- faithful but downtrodden hunchbacked assistants -- like the title character (voiced by John Cusack) who informs us that he graduated from college with a "Yes, masters" degree. Igor longs to be a mad scientist, not a lowly assistant, and he gets his chance when Dr. Glickenstein obliterates himself during an experiment. This sets the stage for the kind of "persevering to be all that you can be" narrative common to so many "family" films. This central lesson persists because it's easy to graft onto almost any setting -- you can find the need to excel in just about every area of human endeavors -- and because it's a moral that fits in with traditionally American concepts of individuality. Unfortunately, nothing about this film seems to have been thought out past the initial burst of inspiration. Even though the movie features the talents of some highly gifted comic performers -- including John Cleese, Jennifer Coolidge, and Molly Shannon -- nobody is given anything memorable to say. The actors are working hard, Steve Buscemi as a suicidal yet indestructible robot most especially, but they can't breathe life into the two-dimensional characters, or the rather stale story arc. Even the film's look starts to wear thin because the forebodingly dark Frankenstein-inspired interiors throw a wet blanket over the comedy, and the character designs aren't very interesting. The movie does offer a decent slice of social commentary in the third act about living in a land where the leaders lie and keep the people living in fear -- a message underscored by Cusack's real-life political stance -- but nothing else about the story ties in directly with this surprising splash of topicality. Like everything else about Igor, this theme remains a great idea that nobody bothered to develop.