How 'The Bride!' pays homage to 'Young Frankenstein'

Maggie Gyllenhaal's movie \

We're discussing minor spoilers for "The Bride!" Beware if you want to go in totally cold.

More than 50 years ago, a lumbering Peter Boyle did a little soft shoe to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in Mel Brooks' “Young Frankenstein.” With “The Bride!” Christian Bale gets a chance to break out his own dancing boots for the Irving Berlin classic.

In director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s wild “Bride of Frankenstein” take (in theaters now), Bale’s version of Frankenstein’s monster – named Frank – and the reanimated Bride (Jessie Buckley) lose themselves and their troubles in a song-and-dance number. It's “the beginning of this roller coaster ride that unifies them, that is thrilling and exciting as hell,” Bale says. “The roller coaster's kind of rickety, and you're not sure if the whole thing is just going to come collapsing down any minute, and so it makes the ride even more exciting.”

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Set in 1936, “The Bride!” brings this couple of monsters together for a violent cross-country road trip full of crime and murder that also bonds them as soulmates. Frank adores the screen idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), and he and the Bride run into Ronnie when they crash a swank hotel dinner party. The film star cruelly dismisses Frank, bumming him out, but spirits are raised when he and his love, plus a whole bunch of dancers, do a dance number set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” that’s angry, disobedient and kind of punk.