Summary
: Lawrence Talbot (
Benicio Del Toro
) is bitten by a werewolf and now he is cursed as a werewolf. The town hunts him down, family secrets are revealed and the hairy beast manages to find love.
Review
: I used to think Benicio Del Toro couldn't pick a bad movie. His list of films are practically flawless. Unfortunately,
The Wolfman
leaves a gash in the Oscar winner’s resume -- but, hey, everybody gets one. The only thing
The Wolfman
has going for is the Hollywood gloss -- when it's not padded with unrealistic CGI. The director,
Joe Johnston
, managed to capture the grit of 1890s London, but that is the solitary redeeming piece of this flick.
The Wolfman
tries to be a respectable horror film, but it gushes with uppity dialogue, bad accents and huge plot holes. The movie is only a few horror screams away from being as bad as
Friday The 13th
. I'd rather watch
Teen Wolf
on repeat than yawn through
The Wolfman
again. It's the type of movie where you can fall asleep for 20 minutes, wake up and realize you didn't miss a thing.
Flaws that shoot a bullet through the heart of
The Wolfman
: Humans morph into werewolves at a full moon -- well, in 1891 London there is a full moon every night. Nightly, the hairy beast is pouncing around London howling at the moon and snapping off human limbs. Is this consistent full moon a mystical sign of global warming from the Victorian-era? Maybe they should've added an environmental plot line and, to make it even sillier, a cameo from PETA -- I think wolves being depicted in a ghastly movie like this is
a better fight than Kelis
. But, I digress...
There are some interesting scenes, particularly when Del Toro morphs into a werewolf in front of a crowd of skeptics. It's the one scene where everything is bright (if lighting was actually like this movie in real life,
Joan Rivers
would never need plastic surgery!), and we get to properly see the transformation. However, what dampens these entertaining transformation scenes is one has to believe that his clothes are made out of lycra because this werewolf somehow fits into his gear even when he grows double his size in seconds -- maybe he wears Spanx!
Going the romance route can easily demolish a "horror" flick, which is what happened in
The Wolfman
. Imagine if
Jodie Foster
found love with Buffalo Bill in
Silence of the Lambs
? Emily Blunt as the constantly sobbing damsel made the movie feel like a bloody
Bridget Jones Diary
with a hairier male lead.
Thankfully, the acting is strong but not even Del Toro and the legendary
Anthony Hopkins
can save this flick.
The Wolfman
is a remake from 1941 and further proof that some classics need to remain in their time. But, just like werewolves are cursed, so is the film. According to published reports, the movie was re-edited several times, the release date pushed back (originally scheduled to be released in November 2008) and scenes were re-shot. Looks like
The Wolfman
never had a chance to truly howl.
The Wolfman
is in theaters today.
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