The Wolfman: Nothing To Howl At
On February 12, Universal Pictures released their remake of the 1941 classic, The Wolfman. They wrangled an all-star cast that featured Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and, newly Oscar nominated actress, Emily Blunt. However, even with all this talent and a classic story, Universal didn’t quite pull this one off.
Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot (Larry in the original version), an English-born American actor who receives letter from his brother Ben’s fiancee, Gwen (Blunt), asking for him to come home to help find his missing brother. Lawrence arrives to his estranged father, who we later discover is the one that sent him away to America. Although his brother’s body has already been found, Lawrence agrees to stay in Blackmoor until he finds out what happened to his brother.
During his search for answers, Lawrence is attacked by the beast but survives. Soon, the village goes into a frenzy to capture him before he starts to kill. Meanwhile, Gwen and Lawrence are developing a thing for each other and Lawrence’s creepy father is acting pretty weird but they can only attribute it to his distant personality. At one point, he even hands Lawrence over to the villagers, which results in him going into an asylum. Chaos ensues and eventually there is an anti-climactic showdown.
I’m giving The Wolfman a C+. Going into it, I expected a legitimate thriller, but found that, while the actors did their jobs, the writers really did not. While it was just odd to think of Del Toro as an 19th century Englishman, he pulled it off okay. Hopkins really brought back a Hannibal Lector type of persona for this role to make himself creepy. As for Blunt and Weaving, it wouldn’t have really mattered if they were in the film at all. Unfortunately, their characters were only really just necessary for the last 20 minutes of the film.
The story line was rushed and shallow. There just wasn’t enough development of the story. I just feel that, if you’re going to do a remake of a classic film you have two options: stick to it exactly but with better special effects, or expand the story. They didn’t do either.
I was really trying to contain my excitement for The Wolfman before I saw it, and I’m glad I was able to because I would’ve really set myself up for a letdown. Overall, this was a take-it-or-leave-it kind of movie that just did not live up to what it really could have been. If I could have gone back, I think that I would have left it.
Author: Crissy Zamarron
Photos: Universal Pictures
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