The Wolfman is a decent film at best, which is a bit of a miracle considering all the shenanigans that went on during the making of this movie. Problems during any part of a movie production is expected on every film shoot, and on occasion, massive problems arise at every stage of production. What is surprising is when a movie goes through incredible turmoil during a production, and actually ends up being watchable. A low standard for sure, but a standard that many movies still fail to achieve.
First off, the plot – Lawrence Talbot (Benny of the Bull, Che) returns to his home in Victorian England, circa 1891, to investigae the brutal murder of his brother. While Larry’s in town schmoozing with his suspiciously hairy father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins, Magic) and his dead bro’s fiancé (Emily Blunt, Charlie Wilson’s War), there are more brutal attacks, and Larry gets himself but by a werewolf (surely to the shock of audiences worldwide). At the subsequent full moon, Larry werewolfs it up and partakes in some grisly murdering, which brings in a Scotland Yard inspector (Hugo Weaving, V For Vendetta) who mostly hangs out on the periphery and doesn’t do much.
The story is pretty bland and doesn’t bother doing anything too crazy or original, and there are a few parts of the movie that don’t mesh well with other parts. The love story feels really truncated, as Larry and his brother’s fiancé fall in love, through absolutely nothing happens to entice this. They never do anything or spend time together enough to fall in love (especially so soon after the brother’s death) – they are just in love, Pow!, like that. It is also a little creepy how she looks a lot like Larry's dead mother. Between that and the way his relationship with his father ends, it all gets rather oedipal. The Talbot family assistant slash housekeeper slash silver bullet holder serves absolutely no function or purpose, and I suspect his role was significantly reduced from draft to draft, until there was nothing left. Hugo Weaving’s Inspector character gets a few decent lines and moments, but he really spends most of his time just observing or futility chasing after distant wolf howls. It definitely feels like he should have been a more relevant character – the movie even ends by positioning him as the focus of a possible sequel – but ultimately Weaving mostly just sports some rocking facial hair and waits for the werewolf to strike.
The weirdly shortened and weightless story must be a product of two different creative teams working on the film. Music video director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) was working with a screenplay written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven), but just before they started filming, Romanek left the project due to good ole’ “creative differences” with the higher ups. In order to keep the movie production on track, a new director was hired to step in and film the bastard. Enter Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III), who has a very limited amount of time to prep for the film. Part of his prep work included having writing David Self (The Road to Perdition) re-write the screenplay, and muscling special effects wizard Rick Baker out of the way so he could make more room for CGI. And then Universal Studios got into the meddling act when they decided not to use Danny Elfman’s moody and gothic score and had a more upbeat and electronic score commissioned (because it worked for them with the awful Underworld movies). Fortunately, test screenings proved that this electronic score did not fit the tone of the movie, and Elfman’s score was dug back up and used. However, due to scheduling conflicts, his score was completed by several other composers, as Elfman was working on Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton. So even the music of the movie was completed by multiple people due to shenaniganry.
Despite all this meddling, The Wolfman is not awful. There is some crazy special effects work, and by that I mean the movie gets surprisingly graphic and splattery. There’s one moment where a hunting party hits the woods and they get dismantled one at a time by ole Wolfie, and the last guy in the party gets stuck in some mud and can’t get away from the monster. He points his revolver at his own head and pulls the trigger, but he’s out o ammo, so he has to endure the wrath of the Wolfman. But the Wolfman simply knocks the guy’s head off with one swipe, and ended up killing him more efficiently than an old stinky revolving would have anyway. There was a bunch of beheadings, disembowlments and a few other inventive gore shots, and that’s all fun and good. But the best moments are the ones where things are hidden, like when everyone is running around in the pitch black woods, with only the light of the moon providing illumination, black silhouettes running between in trees in the darkness. And there is a Wolfman versus Wolfman battle that gets a little cheesy, but for the most part, this scene works great because the scene consists of two men in wolfmen make-up, as opposed to two weightless CG creations, and the fight is pretty intense and bloody. So while there are times where computer effects are the order of the day, there is enough practical effects to make the action and violence really work.
In the end, The Wolfman is a fun movie, though the lackluster story makes the whole thing hit or moss. Benicio is appropriately intense and brooding, and he might very well already by a werewolf. And Sir Anthony Hopkins was a great choice, as he automatically brings some gravitas to the film, and he plays his part with the right mix of seriousness and fun. Joe Johnston has never been known as a director of significant style, but he does a decent enough job in giving us an interesting visual presentation. At the least, The Wolfman serves as a decent homage to the old school Universal monster pictures, from the retro Universal Studios logo at the beginning to the upright walking Wolf Man, and I would love to see more O.G. style monster movies, but only if they can really get their crap together during the production. Hire a director, and stick with him, dammit! It’s so simple in theory. In theory.
Click here for more articles from Christopher Crespo, the Orlando Movie Examiner.
Hear Christopher Crespo call in to SBK Live! every Monday night at 8:50 PM for a review of the prior weekend's box office and films.
Email Christopher Crespo at crespo11882@yahoo.com.
Dig www.twitter.com/MovieExaminer and www.facebook.com/OrlandoMovieExaminer
Comments
True, Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro were a great choice. However, I strongly disagree with a lot of things. The storyline actually had a pretty good plot and unlike the original, the storyline goes even deeper into the plot and it did scare me a bit during certain scenes where I did not expect to get scared. Generally, I don't really care what some people say with such harsh thoughts and a lot of these critics say and their so-called opinions. A lot of them think they know movies, when they don't know squat about being a werewolf fan, let alone being a horror fan. This was a very cool werewolf movie and unlike the ones in Twilight. Lot of Twilight fans seem to lack of conception with werewolves and horror. Lot of fans say Jacob is a werewolf, they keep calling him a werewolf, which he clearly ISN'T. Jacob's just a shape shifter who may turns into an over-sized wolf but an ordinary wolf, otherwise. But nothing in between.
Theres a reason werewolves are called "werewolves" because werewolves are being that can change into snarling, wolf-like beast that can walk on two legs and that are in between forms - the way it should be. And this was the best werewolf film I have seen in a long time and I'll choose the Wolfman over Twilight's wolf version any day. Besides, the Wolves in twilight are CGI and looks to cartoonish.
With the Wolfman, they used a real actor in make-up, which looked pretty real and cool. Real stunts, and unlike the original 1941 version, you get to see the werewolf tear his victims up and he was a total bad-ass. Not only it payed homage to the original, it also payed a little bit of homage to an American werewolf in London, where the werewolf was running loose on the streets, causing chaos! True, it has a different ending version on DVD but that don't mean anything, it's just a different version of the ending, nothing serious. Army of darkness had an alternate ending in the special DVD edition as well but it's alternate ending wasn't taken seriously. Personally, I prefer the original ending because it made more sense( same way with Army of darkness's original ending).
Anyway, The Wolfman was a cool werewolf movie and yes, very fun to watch and I would still recommend the DVD : )
This comment actually made me re-read my review, because some of it didn''t make much sense. Did you actually read the review? It's generally pretty positive - basically the story bored me, everything else was cool, the end. And who said anything about Twilight? Or alternate endings? And I said I liked the non-CG effects work (but not the CG stuff), the brutal attacks and the old school actor in make up approach. We generally agree on this one, despite some of my "harsh thoughts."
Yeah, as a fan of werewolf movies, it's a fine entry in the genre. But just because someone isn't a fan of this genre (and I'm not saying I'm not a fan), it doesn't mean they have to turn off their "bad movie" detector and let anything slide by. I guess I'm just trying to stand up for critics, like you want to stand up for this movie. It has aspects I appreciated as a fan of genre films, but it lacked overall. I'm a fan of all of the people involved in making this, and I was hoping for a really well made, fun, awesome movie. I didn't feel like I got that. It's called subjectivity a.k.a. different strokes for different folks.
I look forward to future disagreements (and/or partial disagreements with tangents).
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!