Entertainment

‘Frankenweenie’ is a Monster piece!

Do as they’re doing: Watch “Frankenweenie” in glorious 3-D.

‘Frankenweenie’’ is Tim Burton’s best film in years. With this expanded, beautifully realized and highly entertaining animated version of his famous 1984 live-action short about a young loner and his resurrected dog, Burton, whose films have gotten progressively more overblown and overproduced, goes back to ghoulish basics. It’s an endearingly modest and affectionate tribute to the classic 1930s monsters and their influence on daydreaming kids like Burton who grew up in suburbia four decades later.

The first black-and-white 3-D feature

film since the 1950s, “Frankenweenie’’ is a great retro experience enacted by exquisitely detailed miniature models in slightly jerky stop-motion animation — a medium Burton previously employed to great effect for “The Nightmare Before Christmas’’ and “Corpse Bride.”

The excellent voice cast features many veterans of Burton’s past films, including Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara in several roles. But the filmmaker has wisely given a rest to his overworked muses Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Charlie Tahan voices young Victor Frankenstein, whose only friend, the family dog Sparky, is run over by a car.

Our bereft hero gets an idea when his science teacher (Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi in Burton’s “Ed Wood’’ and here channeling character actor

J. Carrol Naish) demonstrates the effect of electrical current on a deceased frog.

Borrowing his mom’s kitchen utensils, some Christmas decorations and an assortment of umbrellas, resourceful Victor turns his attic into a makeshift laboratory where he harnesses lightning. He manages to bring Sparky’s stitched-together corpse back to life, though he keeps having to sew the dog’s tail back on.

Victor is successful, at least at first, in hiding the re-animated pet from his parents (voiced by Short and O’Hara), who were concerned about his lack of interest in sports even before he took up his new hobby.

The secret is shared with his Gothic young neighbor, Elsa Van Helsing (Winona Ryder), whose uncle is the pompous mayor of the town.

All heck breaks loose, though, when a trio of Victor’s classmates learn about his experiments thanks to the snooping of a hunchbacked misfit named “E’’ Gore (who sounds just like Peter Lorre).

Their own, far more problematic experiments wreak havoc at local town New Holland’s annual celebration of its heritage, which includes a large windmill on a hill that figures prominently at the climax.

There are significant overlaps in plot with this summer’s 3-D stop-motion animated “ParaNorman’’ — both films also open with the heroes watching homemade 3-D movies — which was originally going to be directed by Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas’’ collaborator, Henry Selick.

But “Frankenweenie’’ is still the most Tim Burton-y of the director’s films, and not just because it contains a vast catalog of references to his own movies — everything from “Edward Scissorhands’’ to the underrated 1989 “Batman.’’

The film’s creepy but basically sweet humor, and its entire look, is pure Burton — including a cat named Mr. Whiskers who turns into a vampire, and a poodle who’s transformed by electricity into an iconic female horror character.

Burton leaves no horror stone unturned, from mummies to werewolves — and he even throws in giant monsters from ’50s Japanese movies for good measure.

Even when he turns to spectacle, Burton never lets “Frankenweenie’’ veer very far from the bond between Victor and his imperfectly resurrected pet. That’s what makes this one so special.