February 16, 2011: The Wolfman
There’s absolutely no reason to watch The Wolfman other than to see the Oscar-winning makeup, and I don’t think it’s really anything we haven’t seen before. The Victorian-era story, a variation on the typical “werewolf terrorizes small town” idea which brings family connections into the fold, is kind of a neat idea but gets lost in its own pompous telling.
There’s no shortage of star power on hand here. Anthony Hopkins can do calmly murderous in his sleep, and he delights in another chance at it here. Benicio del Toro gets to dress up and be classy, something he’s not often given a chance to do. Emily Blunt gets to play an intelligent and influential woman in Victorian times, which is of course something she’s familiar with (wink, wink). And Hugo Weaving, who is capable of incredible range in his typical supporting roles, gets to totally ham it up here and he’s loving evey minute of it.
Where this all doesn’t help, though, is that a neat idea needs to be fleshed out to feature length. Father/son conflict with a bit of werewolf thrown in is great, and some nice werewolf transformations and slashing of innocent townspeople is part and parcel of the genre (hence the aforementioned makeup Oscar), but in my opinion werewolf hand-to-hand combat is as useless as that between vampires unless they are trying to shoot each other with silver bullets, and people usually don’t get long drawn-out death speeches when they have been shot through the heart, and really, how many people need to die mysteriously with the exact same type of unidentifiable injuries before everyone admits that there’s a werewolf running around?
The Wolfman’s flaws exceed its merits, so I can’t recommend this one. In a touching note, at the Oscars when the film won for its makeup, special effects legend and now-seven-time Oscar winner Rick Baker (most notable for An American Werewolf in London – 1981) said just a few words before turning over the microphone to his co-winner. Upon taking the podium, Dave Elsey said “It was always my ambition to lose an Oscar one day to Rick Baker…this is better”. Now, I have to say that THAT almost tips the balance toward me thinking that this movie should exist.
Innovative werewolf movie squanders its potential.
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