Yesterday, FX announced a bunch of pilot TV shows. You’re likely saying, “Sure, whatever, who cares?” Oh, dear reader, you should care. You should care very much, because one of those shows is called Very Young Frankenstein. Yes, it’s a play on the amazingly perfect Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein. Normally, I’d be like, “Do we really need such a thing? Does everything need a reboot?” Turns out, I’ll give an enthusiastic “YES PLEASE” when such a vehicle is helmed by Taika Waititi.
If you somehow don’t know who Waititi is, he’s responsible for some of the funniest/arguably best movies and shows of the last 10+ years. You need examples? Great! He was partly (or entirely) responsible for all of the following: What We Do in the Shadows (both the movie, which he stars in, and the show); Our Flag Means Death; the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit; Thor: Love and Thunder; and my personal favorite, Flight of the Conchords, which he wrote for regularly because New Zealand.
The running joke about most of Waititi’s projects is that he turns common tropes about things like vampires and pirates on their heads. None of the vampires in either version of WWDITS are exceptionally adept at luring people into their untimely demise; they rely on their human familiar to do literally everything for them because they’re all bisexual idiots. The pirates on OFMD are not incredible at being pirates, with the possible exception of Blackbeard as played by Waititi himself, but they’re all gay and idiots nonetheless. I haven’t watched a superhero movie in years, but I’m told he did similar things in Thor: Love and Thunder.
True, you could argue that the characters in the original Young Frankenstein were not the brightest bulbs already, but if Waititi finds a way to take the inspiration and combine it with what he does best, soon enough those characters will be morons AND super gay. We’re all for it. Plus, the show will star Zach Galifianakis, presumably in the Dr. Frankenstein role, and Carey Elwes and Kumail Nanjiani are also part of the cast, so count me sat and locked the fuck in. If I get to hear Kumail Nanjiani say, “Taffeta, darling,” I might actually die, and it will 100% be worth it.
