A Great, Big, Hairy DOG of a Movie?!?!?

 

As for a date movie, don't see Valentine's Day or The Wolfman.  Go see The Blind Side, or even better, rent a classic movie and stay home.

 

However, that doesn't mean The Wolfman isn't so stupid in places as to be funny.

 

For example, the most stupid scene in the movie is:

 

 

I mean, imagine a London psychologist, who I shall call head doofus, subjects Benicio Del Toro to repeated torture and hallucinogenic drugs, and then manages to present him to a room of fellow psychologists on the night of a full moon so they can together watch Del Toro realize that he is not a lycanthrope. 

 

Mind you, if I were subjected to all that, I would hope to turn into a werewolf, too.  But that's beside the point.

 

As Del Toro transmogrifies at the appearance of the full moon, the doctors all get up as any sane man would and immediately leave. . . . No, that's not what happened.  They all demonstrated why their possible deaths would improve psychology for a hundred years by wasting time trying to get the head doofus to turn around and see what was going on.  Head doofus showed more intelligence after he FINALLY turns around, and immediately pulls himself up and over the rail and heads for the door where he opens it and goes out. . . . No, that's not what happened.  The door is, as cliched as it sounds, locked, so he pulls out the cliched key ring with a bazillion keys and doesn't know which one opens the door, and then argues with a dumb-as-stone janitor about opening the door, giving Del Toro de Lycanthrope time enough to defenestrate head doofus, who meets his cliche end impaled on the ironwork below.   And the other doctors have already exited the room through the double doors. . . . No, that's not what happened.  I couldn't see exactly what happened, but it seems the first doctors through the doors locked the doors behind them, trapping all the other doctors for the Wolfman to thrash if he wanted.  I mean, if that is actually what happened, it would be the only smart (even if vastly unethical) act of self-preservation demonstrated by anybody in the movie.   If it didn't happen that way, what a shame.   An opportunity lost. . . .

 

From Anthony Hopkins giving us his screen presence and little more, to Emily Blunt's cliched character of the fiancee of the late brother who falls in love with the next brother, to Del Toro, Hopkins, the late brother and the late mother not looking anything alike, to Hopkins killing his wife but for some reason sparing his son, to the faithful Indian servant who stays around despite knowing his boss' insanity, to the men traipsing about the woods late at night with no torches trying to shoot a beast who races at 30 mph and instead bumbling about in fear, shooting each other and providing plenty of excuses for gratuitous violence. . . .

 

And when you know a man becomes a wolfman one month after being wounded by another wolfman and survives, and you learn this from Hugo Weaving, and Weaving is standing there, in front of you, clearly wounded by the Wolfman, and your guns are loaded with silver bullets, why are you just standing around? . . .

 

But what is most hilarious is the line from the fortune teller from BloodRayne, er, a gypsy woman (yes, they have the cliched gypsy camp):  "It is a sin to kill a man, but it is not a sin to kill a beast.  But where does the beast end and the man begins?"  Just stop blabbering and kill the guy, will you? 

 

The next most hilarious is from Emily Blunt's Gwen, who says that if Del Toro is really a Wolfman, then everything is possible, like magic, God, Santa Claus and the tooth fairy (The Rock has already proven that to us, and I wish he hadn't. . . .).

 

And there's at least three flashbacks, and one point where Hopkins gives a very long exposition. . . .

 

Mind you, Anthony Hopkins sleepwalking through a script shows more talent than many actors, let alone many of our regular Razzie nominees, and Del Toro, Weaving and Blunt perform well beyond what the script deserves.  It's the quality of the acting that keeps this movie from causing me to split my sides with laughter and tolerate the onscreen lunacy (pun intended).  And this is what gives this movie its worst curse -- it is an extremely disappointing movie.  It could have easily been a classic for all time.  Rework the script to move from the stupid to the intelligent, rework the jump scares from the merely gratuitous to the fearful, treat the characters less like props and more like real beings, and deal cinematically with the issues of "giving into the beast" (I would have loved to hear a screaming all out dramatic argument between Hopkins and Del Toro over this, but instead we get the exposition). . . . we could have had such a great movie.

 

Instead, we have some gratuitous violence, some special effects and a wasted opportunity. 

 

Look for Hugo Weaving getting stuck with starring in a sequel no one wants.  When will Weaving be cast in an Oscar worthy role deserving of his talent?

 

 

I think it's just for the atomsphere and how the British are sterotype as being all well-spoken and proper, so it's only fitting to turn them in savage wolves and what not.