Jack Burton Howls in Pain at WOLFMAN

One of the few werewolves I actually acknowledge.


This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express, and I'm talkin' to whoever's listenin' out there.

I caught The Wolfman yesterday, and by "caught," I mean it very much in the same vein as catching lycanthropy: a curse that damns you for the rest of your life. Am I being overly dramatic? I don't know, but I couldn't even stay awake for parts of this train wreck. I was very much looking forward to this film because Joe Johnston directed it. He's directing the upcoming The First Avenger: Captain America film, and has worked on such fanboy classics as the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Rocketeer, and a slew of other awesome films. So he has the pedigree, and someone out there seems to think he has the chops to hang with the likes of Lucas and Spielberg. So I had hoped for something interesting, something... er... passable as a film. Sadly, this was not meant to be.

I don't know what went wrong with the retelling of a man bitten by a werewolf and hunted by society. It's a simple concept, and you'd think that it'd be executed simply. It may not be timeless, but it could sure as hell be entertaining enough for the here and now. But no. The performances are lackluster at best, save for Hugo Weaving's turn as Scotland Yard Inspector Francis Aberline. He's having a great time of it. Sure, he can never truly escape the Agent Smith comparisons to his characters, but why would he want to, since Agent Smith was such a memorable and hilariously awesome character? Emily Blunt was beautiful, but not really interesting. Benicio Del Torro and Anthony Hopkins both mailed in their performances. The performers just seemed like they knew that they were wasting their time with this drivel.

Okay, so the performances were bad, the pacing was awfully slow (at 1h 46m, it actually felt longer than Avatar), the story and plot details boring, and the Wolfman costume horrible. But at least the town looked authentic enough. That's the weird thing about Joe Johnston films (such as the Rocketeer): they look good enough, but they lack any real redeeming qualities. It's quite appropriate that Danny Elfman did the score.

One last word about the costume: I have never, ever seen a serious werewolf costume that I thought was spot-on awesome. They have always looked hokey to me. I don't know why. But this monstrosity was probably the worst of the bunch. When will they just put a big ass wolf on the damn screen instead of making some weird hybrid-looking motherfucker? It's not scary, or frightening, or whatever.

So I spent:

22.00 on two tickets for me and a buddy, who drove.

If I could redo this, I would never, ever have spent money on this thing. Until next time, Pork Chop Express is signing off.