I promised myself after Joe Johnston single-handedly destroyed the Jurassic Park trilogy with the worst dinosaur movie ever made (Jurassic Park III), that I’d make one of my many goals in life never contribute to his box office gross ever again. Luckily, Jurassic Park III was so utterly bad and a slap in the face to anyone who ever enjoyed the trilogy that I didn’t think I’d ever have to worry about it again. Johnston had sucked all of the intelligence and philosophical debate out of the series previous installments, and replaced them with 82 minutes of random people running through the jungle, and a plot about as dense and emotionally resonant as an episode of Barney. So, I’ve rested easy the past decade or so, knowing that Joe Johnston would never rise again to pollute movie screens.
But then The Wolfman was announced, with Joe Johnston directing. All I’ve heard about since the first trailer is the grittiness, the depth of character that Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins will bring to the screen, and how this will not only be Johnston’s best movie (which really isn’t hard to do), but one of the best werewolf movies ever (which, also, isn’t hard to do). Well, the definition of insanity (according to Wikipedia) is repeating the same action while expecting a different outcome, so clearly whoever hired Johnston to recreate one of Universal’s most legendary monsters was, well, insane.
Why? Because it isn’t different. Sure, it’s not the kid-friendly, action-packed spectacle of stupidity that Jurassic Park III was. No, instead, it’s a non-kid friendly, boring spectacle of stupidity.
The Wolfman is about a guy who turns into a werewolf. There’s no need to explain anything more than that. If you don’t know the basic plot, then you’re blind and deaf, or you just awoke from a coma you’ve been in since birth. We follow Benicio Del Toro, who has been in hiding for the last decade, as he struggles through the everyday issues of dealing with an estranged father, boning his dead brother’s girlfriend and turning into a wolf Hulk-style, using CGI transformations that take up a good majority of the movie. Seriously, by the third or fourth time we get to watch him transform into a wolf we just don’t care anymore. I’ve been more entertained watching my Squirtle evolve into Blastoise. Yes, the first time around it’s pretty cool but we get the f*cking point, you don’t need to show us every single time.
The overlong transformations essentially epitomize everything wrong with The Wolfman: it’s dumb, and the special effects, which grow tedious after awhile, make futile attempts to cover it up like an idiot who uses big words he just looked up on Google. Johnston’s thought process, I suspect, involves covering the screen with so much spectacle that we forget that the writing sucks. “You’re a monster hunter, sometimes monsters hunt you.” Brilliant.
Overreliance on CGI has become somewhat of a pet peeve with me, and though it can sometimes look pretty cool, you can’t deny the fact that it always looks fake. Even the world’s (arguably) best CGI, “Avatar,” looks more like an Xbox game than a movie at times. We’ve kind of become bored with the whole thing; thanks to CGI, saying a movie has good special effects is like saying it was filmed with a camera. Good special effects are pretty much a given, so they can’t really be used to cover up flaws in storytelling (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay). Hell, even most of the Victorian city in The Wolfman is computer-generated and looks more like it belongs in World of Warcraft rather than a big-budget Hollywood movie. However, the main werewolf probably could've used the CGI treatment in more action scenes, considering the makeup effects make him look like an oversized Ewok.
As far as acting goes, nobody really goes over the top, but nobody really entertains, either. Del Toro has about as much personality as that girl passed out on the couch at a party, and it’s difficult to empathize with his situation, especially considering he’s trading sexy looks with his dead brother’s sister the whole movie. Honestly, I’d rather hang out with the wolf he turns into, at least he’s somewhat entertaining. Anthony Hopkins is supposed to be the voice of wisdom, the good guy, but it’s hard to see him as such since he built his film career on eating peoples’ brains. The only actor who really does a serviceable job is Megatron…err…I mean Hugo Weaving, who will hereafter be referred to as Agent Smith…I mean Megatron. Anyway, Megatron’s the primary antagonist, or I think Johnston intended him to be. Or, well, would be if the film’s actual protagonist wasn’t so damn unlikable.
The Wolfman as a whole, seems like a wasted opportunity. It makes a good trailer but so did Jurassic Park III. Megatron does the best he can as far as characters go; the only other actor who does a decent job is the CGI wolf. There’s some good makeup effects when the wolfman isn’t computer generated and they somehow made Megatron look like a 6-foot tall human, so that’s some top-notch work. Between the painfully long transformations, and the relatively entertaining murder sequences (that sounds slightly sociopathic out of context), it’s boring and just plain dumb, with dialogue that’s as painful to listen to as the jerks who play Call of Duty all night in the apartment below me with their bass turned all the way up (seriously, on the off-chance you guys learn to read one day and end up coming across this article, I want you to know that I hate you).
It seems that Johnston, in an effort to avoid the mistake he made in Jurassic Park III of not having any character development, created brand new mistakes in trying to have character development and failing miserably. All in all, The Wolfman is the product of Johnston trying too hard to not seem stupid. The movie isn’t bad, as this relatively negative review may suggest. It’s just there. It’s nothing. A flash in the pan that you’ll watch, then forget about it 10 minutes later.
But trust me, that’s probably for the best.
