FRANKENWEENIE

An elaborate teaser for the stop-motion feature film offers slide shows, video clips and opportunities aplenty for additional purchases.

The enhanced e-book is composed of stills, developmental “sketch to screen” slide shows, snippets of video and bite-sized passages of bland descriptive text. Successive chapters offer introductions to Tim Burton’s work (including the early short film that inspired this feature version), the new release’s suburban setting, a traveling exhibition of props and its cast. This last ranges from nerdy young Victor and his classmates to the beloved dog he revivifies, a mummy hamster and other featured creatures. The several further “chapters” are thinly disguised links to movie-ticket vendors and more print and music spinoffs. An interactive collage maker at the beginning is crudely designed, and later 3-D views of selected characters are slow to turn and heavily pixelated. Still, page swipes and tap-activated close-ups work smoothly, as do the native dictionary and search features. Moreover, the plethora of visual material does provide a clear sense of the film’s stylized look and appeal, plus glimpses of how stop-motion puppets are constructed and convincingly photographed.

More a commercial-minded keepsake than a movie storybook, with barely a mention of either plotline or filmmaking techniques.