Funny thing. Every time I see an ad or trailer for The Wolfman, I’m reminded of that episode of Friends where Phoebe and Chandler debate the pronunciation of Spider-Man. I think it’s the fact that the movie title is lacking the space between words that its 1941 counterpart had. But then, it’s lacking a lot of qualities that the original had.
What the latest adaptation of the werewolf classic does have is Benicio del Toro. He plays Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal son of a wealthy Englishman. After witnessing the grizzly death of his mother and being hospitalized for his trouble, Lawrence escaped to the United States. He is back in jolly old England with his American accent as an actor performing Hamlet when he’s summoned to his ancestral home at Blackmoor Manor by his brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt).
A few nights earlier, while Lawrence’s big brother Ben was strolling by the light of the full moon, he was attacked by some sort of creature and mauled beyond recognition. Gwen, all teary eyes and quivering lips, entreats Lawrence to uncover the truth of what’s happened to her man. What Victorian gentleman could resist?
The Talbot patriarch, John (Anthony Hopkins), for one. He tries to convince his remaining son to dig no further into the strange goings-on or the diminishing numbers of citizens in their quaint little moor. To do so, he delivers long, loving soliloquies on the overwhelming power and beauty of the moon and the dangers that lurk in digging up the past. These should be a tip-off to the son that dad’s got bats in his belfry from all those long years without a wife at the manor, but it isn’t.
So Lawrence ventures out into the woods to a gypsy encampment near where his brother disappeared. He fails to heed the warning from the nice Roma lady, Maleva, who tells him not to go chasing after demons. We know her words will fall on deaf ears. Otherwise, how’s he going to get bitten by the beast and become hirsute Larry Wolfman (pronounced whichever way you prefer)?
Twenty-eight days later, we get what we came to see: the werewolf’s transformation, courtesy of veteran make-up man Rick Baker, who also made Michael Jackson and Jack Nicholson over for their lycanthropic turns in the video for Thriller and 1994’s Wolf, respectively. This changeover stays true to the 1941 film’s pulpy, creature feature roots and has sunken-eyed, brooding Benicio writhing to life as fang-and-claw sprouting, hair-growing beast that howls at the moon. While computer-generation plays a healthy part in the change, it’s nowhere near as heavy-handed as the recent teen-wolf version in the latest installment of Twilight.
Sadly, that’s where the magic of this film begins and ends. Don’t get me wrong, director Joe Johnston cranks the fog machine up to 11 to achieve The Wolfman’s eerie gothic air. But del Toro, Blunt, and Hopkins chew the hell out of the mise-en-scene (with and without fangs) in a hat trick of overacted, barely believable performances, leaving no room for genuine suspense or surprise at anything that unfolds for the rest of the film.
The screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self has Gwen and Lawrence fall for one another – in a chaste Victorian sort of way – to lend some mystery about the truth of the gypsy’s proclamation that only true love can tame the beast. But Blunt’s lack of screen time solves that mystery before she ever hits the books to find a cure for her new man.
The best performance in the film is given by Hugo Weaving as Abberline, a pompous investigator from Scotland Yard there to arrest the junior Talbot, whom he suspects is a homicidal lunatic in the non moon-loving sense. After he gets him committed to an asylum with cruel treatment methods, he’s there to witness firsthand a bloodbath that includes dripping beheadings, disembowelments, and more.
The problem with The Wolfman is that it tries too hard (or perhaps not hard enough) to stay true to its trashy roots. Del Toro is no Lon Chaney, though. And that over-the-top style that suited horror flicks of the golden age of film does not suit the quasi-realism that Johnston puts on display here. The result is a hokey trifle that is all bark and no bite.
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