02.12
The Wolfman is simply a horrible movie. The art direction and look of the film is wonderful, but that’s about it. On the surface, it seems to have all the right things going for it, but it’s poorly directed, horribly written, badly edited, awfully acted, and all around sucky. Benicio Del Toro delivers his lines with the eloquency of The Elephant Man, Anthony Hopkins seems to be giggling “where’s my check?” every minute he’s on camera, and Emily Blunt is the most underwhelming choice for a female lead I’ve seen in a film for the last several years. I can only imagine the casting directors stating, “Hey…we really liked you as that boring bitchy assistant in The Devil Wears Prada…I bet if you kiss a mush-mouth dude that looks like an hispanic Moe Howard, THE SPARKS ARE GONNA FLY!
The movie has loads of bloody violence that seems played for laughs more than any actual terror evoking purpose. Violent humor in the hands of someone like Quentin Tarantino, Sam Raimi can work, but in the hands of a hack like Joe Johnson, it just feels like someone is tearing up mannequins.
Scene after scene is a giant letdown. In one promising setup, the lead character Lawrence Talbot has been institutionalized because he thinks he’s a werewolf (despite scores of witnesses that saw he was indeed one). The doctor has Talbot strapped to a stretcher in one of those great Victorian era medical rooms that has a sunken pit an an audience of colleagues. The full moon is going to appear in the window, and the doc wants to shame Talbot in front of everyone and have him admit he’s crazy. Del Toro bellows/warns, “I’m going to kill EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM!” The thought of him changing and ripping everyone to shreds is promising, but he basically just attacks two guys, escapes, and then turns into a shitty CGI werewolf that runs along the London rooftops in a sequence that looks worse than the garbage in that Van Helsing movie.
The next ludicrous sequence features Talbot walking all the way home from London, while the token female character and the inspector (played by a disposable and wasted Hugo Weaving) take the same trip on horseback and stagecoach. Even though Talbot is ambling along and waving to men cutting down trees along the way, they all manage to return to the Talbot estate at the same damn time!
Any suspense or twists are removed very early in the film, when Hopkins (Talbot’s father) reveals himself to be a werewolf, too! Why not save that for a dramatic reveal at the end? Because this film is a giant piece of werewolf shit, that’s why!
Even the Wolfman howl is stupid. It sounds like someone shouting, “Scooby-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Please don’t waste your money on this movie.
That sucks. Most Modern Movies suck. CGI sucks. Welcome to the cinematic dark ages.
It’s time to take the modern director and bind him by his feet and hands, throw him into a lava
pit and see if he can swim.
I dunno what you were expecting, I knew they’d fail when they hired Benicio Del Toro he’s one of the most mumbley actors, he sounds like he’s literally choking on every line.
Is it weird that I actually enjoyed Van Helsing? People say it sucked but I thought it was good.
Dude, I love your site, but I have to disagree with you about this flick. Yeah, The Wolfman might not have been the coolest, most kick-ass flick of modern times, but I thought it had some decent action in it.
Then again, I was drunk & stoned when I saw it, so….um, never mind.