by MouthForWar » Sun Feb 14, 2010 2:20 am
Alright here I go... this movie wasn't very good. It could have (and probably should have) been MUCH worse considering all the problems it was up against. But the Wolf Man deserved so much better. This movie is a pretty big mess all around. Its odd because usually a movie will have a solid first or third act with a bad second one... in this film, the second act is the best part by FAR. The asylum scenes, the rampages, and the very ending (minus the sequel opening) were the only things that I thought really worked.
The acting was a mixed bag. Everyone cept for Hopkins is pretty bland. Benicio is an incredible actor, but he doesn't have much to do here. There simply aren't enough character scenes. We never get to know ANYBODY. The father/son relationship and the romance with Emily Blunt are both terribly hamfisted. All the actors do their best with what they have to work with, but Hopkins is the only one that's really memorable. Benicio doesn't get anywhere near the presence he's had in films like Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, 21 Grams, or even Sin City.
There is a good movie in here somewhere. I didn't even mind the BIG change to the story (MAJOR SPOILERS HERE ON OUT SO DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANNA HERE ABOUT IT): I didn't mind going the opposite route of the original with the father/son relationship... but its so undeveloped and sloppy that it takes away any dramatic effect. The story of how Sir John becomes a wolf makes no sense (a feral boy?). If you're gonna make such a DRASTIC change, do it in a way that its actually WORTHWHILE. Instead of feeling great sadness when the two finally go at it, we feel nothing... we feel like we're watching a dumb action movie. And that fight leads me to my next and one of my biggest complaints. That fight at the end took the movie from an alright b-movie into ABSOLUTE RIDICULOUS CORNINESS. The way it was shot made it look retarded, but even worse was the Hopkins-wolf. HE LOOKED F'ING RIDICULOUS. A big buff shirtless Fabio werewolf basically. I loved Benicio's Wolf Man, but Hopkins was such a goofy looking eyesore, I couldn't take the movie seriously after that. I love Rick Baker, but the Hopkins-wolf is probably the worst thing he's ever done. It was doing great by not showing the werewolf during the first third, then it just sh*t the bed big time with that Hopkins werewolf. The CGI bear and steer were also awful looking... why not just get real animals?
There's also plot holes in this thing. How come Larry has a flashback of seeing his father with his mother who is holding the razor she killed herself with, then we see the REAL version of what happened and its Hopkins as a wolf with the dead mother? Wouldn't Larry REMEMBER SEEING HIS DAD AS A WEREWOLF? And if he's the son of a werewolf, wouldn't he already be one to begin with? I mean, what the hell.
The movie gets points for having a pretty decent atmosphere and some f'ing AWESOME kills... The werewolf rampages were FANTASTIC... I felt like a little kid during all of those scenes. The homage to American Werewolf and Rick Baker's cameo had me cracking up. I also liked that they made it a period piece when the original took place in current times... usually its the other way around and I found that to be a cool stroke of creativity. The ending was rather well done, but the opening for another movie was terrible. So there is SOME fun to be had. But even the DVD director's cut with about 20 minutes added back in won't fix all the problems this thing has. It might fix the character development, but it won't fix a shoddily written story.
All in all, I really think a better director would have handled it MUCH better. Its no coincidence that this film shares MANY of the same problems as Joe Johnston's other movies. The whole thing comes off as an action movie director posing and trying to hang with the horror/monster crowd. An outsider saying "HEY LOOK AT ME, I WATCH WEREWOLF MOVIES TOO!" It just feels like a remake of a classic made by someone who doesn't understand the classic OR the horror genre. His RETARDED use of jump scares every five seconds shows that he just doesn't seem to get it. Also, the opening for a sequel was just awful... nobody cares to see this continue that way.
Purely average film making in EVERY WAY. I give it a 2.5/5. There's just not enough here. If Universal is gonna resurrect their monsters, they are gonna have to do MUCH better than this. But I don't see it happening. The Stephen Sommers' movies are downright INSULTING, their Creature script that almost got made was AWFUL and they've already cast Sam Worthington as Dracula and Keanu Reeves as Jeckyl/Hyde, so its not getting off to a good start AT ALL. The only one I'm looking forward to is Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein.
You'd think for a company built on great horror movies, they'd treat them better. Where was the advertising for Land of the Dead again? Nowhere. Were they for real when they released Hellboy 2 the week before frigging BATMAN?! Universal simply don't care about the genre that BUILT them and it shows. Unless their attitude improves, I hope they don't remake any more of their classics. These movies simply deserve MUCH BETTER remakes than the ones they've been dishing out. Oh well, at least its a step up from Stephen Sommers' hack fests.
I can't wait for Martin Scorsese to wash the bad taste of this thing out with a real psychological horror/thriller next week. Shutter Island has been getting rave reviews across the board and it sounds like my kinda flick.
Kaiju Transmissions Podcast-
If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It Podcast
I also enjoyed the homage to Universal's first foray into werewolf cinema with "Werewolf of London"
