If there’s one thing that unites great movies, it’s inspiration. Regardless of feelings about a particular film’s successes and faults, inspiration is always a characteristic that an attentive cinemagoer can spot. It’s the sense of aspiration that drives filmmakers to try something new, to find a different approach or to execute a concept with complete, unabashed conviction. Inspiration by itself is no guarantee of a movie’s quality – far from it – but if there’s a genuine spark of ambition in evidence on the screen, there’s something inherently glorious about that, no matter how the finished product turns out, isn’t there?
Conversely then, there’s nothing more depressing than paying eight quid to see two hours of uninspired cinema. And there’s nothing more insulting than watching a movie that talks to you as a demographic rather than an individual. As Hollywood marketing becomes more and more hyperactive, clicking its fingers in front of our glazed eyes in its attempts to lure us into the cinema, larger numbers of movies seem to be presented to us as a slideshow of features that ought to add up to a movie we’d like. You know, based on surveys and statistics and what we’ve been tweeting over the last six months and the consistency of our most recent bowel movements.
Case in point? The Wolfman, this month’s remake of Universal’s 1941 picture of the same name. Now, to be clear, I haven’t seen the original version (I don’t watch films released before 1990, they reek of old people and death and collapsed livers), so this isn’t a screed about the film’s failure to live up to the legacy of its predecessor. It’s a lamentation at the waste of such fertile subject matter with a movie that feels rushed (it was) and poorly judged. Most unforgivably, the film replaces a consistent vision with a checklist of ingredients that seems to have been thrown together and directed on autopilot.
On a five-point review system, The Wolfman is probably worth two stars – one for imaginative casting and decent performances; the other for the invigorating potency of Hugo Weaving’s mutton chops. Other than that, there’s little to recommend this film. The central narrative is flaccid and predictable (wait, the brooding patriarch with the chequered past and glow-in-the-dark eyes is bad?); the much-hyped effects are unspectacular, with the goofy, undeniably Ferrigno-esque wolf design a particular misstep; and the romance between the two protagonists, central to the pathos of the story, is literally reduced to one scene of idle lakeside stone-skipping.
But all this pales in comparison to the film’s terminal defect. The werewolf legend presents a huge opportunity to create a film dripping with the Gothic atmosphere and veiled threat that flows like a midnight fog from its forested Victorian setting. A palpable sense of foreboding, grainy images of moonlight filtering through gnarled oak branches, a central romance rooted in classic melodramatic tradition – none of these are evident in The Wolfman. Instead we get an overblown score, action scenes that are shoddily directed and drain all the mystery from the film, and scientifically-engineered shocks in place of true horror. The result is a monster movie only a couple of notches above the dreadful Van Helsing.
Maybe this is what happens when a director who has shown true artistic potential (Mark Romanek – One Hour Photo) walks away from a film and is replaced with a studio yes-man who has shown ample technical skill but little vision (Joe Johnston – Jurassic Park III, Jumanji). Maybe this is what happens when delivering a film on-time and on-budget takes priority over cinematic merit. All I know is that I’d rather sit through a hundred Watchmen-esque inspired failures than spend one more minute in the dull company of The Wolfman.
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