Reviewed by L. Bradley Phillips
Here we have Joe Johnston’s take on George Waggner’s 1941 film The Wolfman. Johnston’s reimagining (or remake or whatever) is adapted from Curt Siodmak’s original screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self. By the way, there’s a reboot named Werewolf in the works since this flopped, in case you can’t get enough wolf action.
This film chooses to set the story in 1894 England and opens to a tease of the werewolf attacking villagers and setting the mystery of Our Hero to solve. It was about this time that I found my first fault with the film: while it was not the most egregious of slights for a thriller, I would still have preferred the filmmakers to take a page from the bible of J.J. Abrams and hold back the reveal of the monster. It isn’t something that makes or breaks the film, but without the suspense of anticipating the werewolf for the next 15-20 minutes of exposition, the film does drag slightly. Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot, our hero. Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada), Hugo Weaving (V for Vendetta) and Anthony Hopkins (The Rite) co-star.
The key problem with this adaptation is the vain attempt to develop the characters with secondary and tertiary plot devices. We never get a real sense of involvement into any of these devices; everything is very superficial. Not only do they miss the boat on making us sympathize for our hero on the advent of his mother’s death, and somehow this film even fails to establish a simple Hollywood love story. It is almost as if there were pages of the script they just arbitrarily cut to help the plot make absolutely no sense. The dramatic reveals fall short as being anything but dramatic. You are always left saying either, “I knew that was coming” or “so what?”
Once we get past the mostly useless character development, the film bolsters some great action sequences. There are a few spots where the CGI can look a little video-game-esque, but in a film that is shot in this style and lit so darkly, it is significantly less noticeable than your average “End-Of-Days” film (see: Roland Emmerich). Copious amounts of CGI ruin the realism and completely take the viewer out of the moment. Not to say there is anything overtly realistic about a wolf person, but you get what I’m saying… which brings me to the design of the wolfman himself. The filmmakers’ choice to homage the design of the wolfman of the original movie made him look hokey compared the rest of the largely well-done special effects. I am obviously alone in this opinion, seeing as this film won an Oscar for “best achievement in makeup.”
Wow, looks like I am starting to trend negative on this film. It must be a full moon.
There are elements of this film that make me kind of want to flame it, but ultimately I felt like there were enough redeeming qualities in the action sequences to still be entertaining. That is the most important question I ask myself when I go into one of these reviews, “was I entertained?” In this case, The Wolfman makes it through by the skin of its teeth. I wouldn’t tell you to run out and buy a copy, but if you are flipping channels and it happens to be on HBO, well, there are worse things you could do with your time.
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