Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins were our entertainment last night as Erin and I went out to the 1/15 packed movies to see the Wolfman…and I want to go ahead and tell every one of the negativity spreaders to STFU because it was fantastic!  So many people want to just compare compare compare.  “Ooh, Lon  Chaney this” and “Ooh, Lon Chaney that” and “I knew Universal would blah blah blah” and “the CG was cartoonish” and blah blah blah blah blah.

Kill me.

I’ll have to go ahead and admit that the acting was just so-so, but you have to keep in mind what the movie is based on…Acting was never good during the time of the Universal Monsters and it sure isn’t any good now, so people who complain about the acting are just trying to sound brilliant about a subject they know nothing about.  Sure, all the big name actors like the Pitts and the Cruises and Depps are super popular and if you can remember their names and talk about how “they really nailed that character” you’ll sound halfway intelligent, but the fact of the matter is MOST ACTORS SUCK.  The acting in the Wolfman was no exception but the characters, although not developed very well, worked for me.  I loved the lighting in the night time scenes around the woods and the Gypsy camp, the kills were nothing short of brutal, there was plenty of blood and, my favorite, plenty of cheese, including a scene where an arm is ripped off and slung onto the ground while holding a gun.  Upon hitting the ground, the gun fires and if there wasn’t a mass murder happening at that very moment, one would be extremely tempted to burst into uncontrollable laughter.  I loved it!

Another thing, which may surprise some of you, knowing that I’m not a very big fan of the overuse of computer graphics to achieve your desired effect, is that I thought the transformations were amazing.  They weren’t fluid and fake;  rather, they were jerky and painful, leaving me feeling uncomfortable while watching it take place.  And when the Wolfman finally comes to life, the imagery was fantastic, both giving the Wolfman a newer look and paying homage to the original.  The images given of the Wolfman while on the prowl, when interacting with others and especially when lit by the strobe effect were the very images my nightmares are made of.  Absolutely beautiful.

Finally, I’ll include a few things that missed the mark.  Although the *SPOILER ALERT** final fight scene between the two wolfmen, was well choreographed and animated, I really had a hard time believing that these two really had a problem with each other.  The lack of development of the characters really left me hanging on a lot of things, as I never really was rooting for either one of them in the end, and I certainly didn’t get a sense of family between the two like I did with, say, the Devil’s Rejects.  It was also a little hard to believe that they were aware of each other and knew what they were fighting for since it was made obvious through previous “turnings” that the infected had no memories of what had happened while they were in werewolf form.  Last, it was extremely difficult to determine how much time had passed in the film, because the sequences were filmed like they were day after day after day, yet, it seemed there was a full moon at least every other night?  Now I realize that I’ve been alive for 25 years and I took two semesters worth of Astronomy classes, but you don’t have to have much age or education to know that’s not possible.  One could argue that the simple thought of a wolf-man is impossible as well and I shouldn’t be so picky about these things and to that I would say…You’re right.  My bad. **END SPOILERS**

I’ll end by saying that the Wolfman is certainly something you need to check out if you haven’t already.  It’s a pretty good scare for general horror fans as well as the more hardcore ones.  Lots of violence, lots of blood, lots of cheap scares…no boobs.  I’ll have to subtract a star from the rating.

Enjoy today’s haiku:

Erin often says
that I act like a big ass
can’t help what I love!