How do you make a movie that a) stars Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt and b) just barely – and I mean just fucking barely – turns out to be mediocre? I have no idea, but I’m sure Joe Johnston could tell you. After all, Universal Pictures let him direct The Wolfman.
This movie looks great, the Elfman score is pretty decent, the sound engineering and editing are completely solid, and the production design, costumes, and scenery are very well done. That being said, there’s only about 15 minutes of dialogue and everything is campy as hell while being played dead straight.
This movie can’t figure out what it wants to be, so it ends up being not much at all. It wasn’t awful, or even exactly bad, but it did absolutely nothing for me. I went expecting a monster truck show and I felt like I was watching a dude in a ’76 Silverado drive around my block at a reasonable pace.
EXAMPLE: I fell asleep during the big fight scene. Diana fell asleep during one of the Wolfman hulkouts. I can see dozing off during what passed for exposition, but people getting tore up by Doggles Howlbert should have been at least mildly interesting, and it wasn’t.
The only truly bad thing in the film was the Wolfman make-up, and that’s really more about proof of concept than execution. You’ve seen some of the man->wolf transition in the trailers, and there’s more of that at similar quality in the film. That was rad. The problem is that when the transformation is done, Woof has rad claws, some crazy gigantic scary legs, and the totally goofy 1940′s Wolfman face. I could see what they were shooting for, but it just didn’t work.
Score
The Wolfman gets a 2.5 out of 5.
Due to the wolfman makeup, I kept waiting for the van surfing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cfx7V5e-8Q
Anthony Hopkins is one of the veteran actors in Hollywood that should be given a lifetime acheivement award.:’”
when i hear the name Anthony Hopkins, i always tought of the movie Meet Joe Black. (And a healthy hog)`