Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

After an entire month of horror movie reviews, what better way to cleanse the palette than an animated feature for children?  I opted to go with a movie that I had always been curious about, but never went to see because...well...I don't have kids, so I can pick and choose my animated movie experiences.  Aside from the fact that the CG animation looks amazing in this trailer, this is also Zack Snyder's first effort at directing an animated movie (although I would argue that Watchmen and 300 come pretty darn close), and I've always liked his visual touch, so hopefully this is pretty awesome.

In a throwback to 80s "children" movies like The Dark Crystal, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole opens with a kidnapping.  After all, who says that children's movies shouldn't make your children cry?  Soren (voiced by Jim Sturgess) is an owl that was goofing off with his little brother, Kludd (Ryan Kwanten), when Kludd kicks Soren out of the nest, before he could fly.  And, because nature abhors terrible siblings, Kludd also lost his balance and fell to the base of their maghty home tree, with Soren.  Instead of getting eaten by Tasamanian Devils, which was apparently an option, the pair was rescued/kidnapped by a couple of dim-witted adult owls.  These scary-looking creatures take young Soren and Kludd to a distant land, where they are presented with an interesting choice.  They can either follow the racist/speciesist teachings of Nyra (Helen Mirren), queen of the Pure Ones, or they can become mindless slaves.

Alternate title: White (Owl) Power

Kludd opts to follow the obvious villain, while Soren rebels and tries to escape.  The strange thing about the Pure Ones is that they're supposed to be the stuff of legend; Soren and Kludd grew up to takes of them being the villains in a long battle against the heroic Guardians.  If the Pure Ones are real, I wonder if the Guardians could be real, too?

Above: an owl realizing that someone wrote sixteen books about owl racism

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole could not be a modern animated movie without a ridiculously famous cast of voice actors.  The most effective in their roles were probably Helen Mirren and Geoffrey Rush; both have wonderfully emotive voices and did a fine job as important, but ultimately peripheral, characters.  Rush plays a great grouch, so it was nice to see that talent being utilized.  Hugo Weaving had a double role, although his voice talents are not exactly what I would call "audibly versatile."  He fine fine in both parts, but anyone who knows his voice can instantly recognize him in both roles.  Joel Edgerton was pretty good as the head bad guy, but it seems odd in retrospect that he was the cast member chosen for the villain role, and not Weaving or Rush.

Maybe he got the role thanks to his physical presence

Sam Neill was well-cast in a bit part, where his lovely voice was meant to be a contrast to his character's actions, and that was nicely done.  But those are just the most notable supporting voice actors.  Jim Sturgess played the main character, a young and idealistic owl who sometimes gets the benefits of super-slow motion shots.

ACTING!

Sturgess was fine, but this is a pretty generic character and he didn't really add anything special to the part.  An odd thing about this cast (that I just noticed) is that it is predominantly Australian, with a few Brits  sprinkled here and there.  I didn't realize that owls needed to speak the Queen's English.  Ryan Kwanten, Anthony LaPaglia, Richard Roxburgh, Leigh Whannell, David Wenham, Essie Davis, Abbie Cornish, and Angus Sampson, Aussies one and all, had roles of varying importance.  Most of their voices were recognizable, but I guess that's point when you fill your voice cast with actual actors.  None of them were bad, but none were too impressive.  As for the non-Australian supporting cast, I thought Miriam Margolyes was suitably cartoonish as a snake nanny and Emily Barclay was suitably bland as the romantic interest for Jim Sturgess.

Romantic owl eyes are slightly unsettling

What about Zack Snyder's direction?  It's no secret that Snyder likes to aim for "epic" as a director, and he did a solid job framing Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole in an epic fashion.  It is interesting watching Snyder's direction in a film where he can get exactly the visuals he wants.  It's not too different from his normal style.  The visuals are stunning.  The slow-motion is prominent and occasionally questionable.

Or, as Snyder likes to call it, "The speed at which all things should happen"

There are large-scale battles, where a small cast of heroes faces down a large number of interchangeable villains.

They're like Storm Troopers that cough up pellets

Snyder tells the story ably enough, but he doesn't get great performances out of his most important characters.  The ideas of love and betrayal have never been prominent in any of Snyder's other films, so seeing him ignore them in a children's story might not be as surprising as it should be.  Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole has all the basic elements of an entertaining animated film, but there's no emotional core to it. Part of the problem is with the writing, which spends little time on characterization, but the director should notice a little thing like entirely two-dimensional characters and have it changed.

I'm guessing he focused more on eye reflections than the script

My other problem with Legend of the Guardians is that it feels very, very familiar.  If you're familiar with Star Wars or the Chronicles of Narnia, or just about any other epic tale with children as an intended audience, then you've seen this plot before.  A lot of kid's movies are like that, but this feels like a Frankenstein of epic childhood fiction, with the only new addition being the owls.

This scene actually dubs in dialogue from Attack of the Clones

I take that back.  Making some of the child characters into mindless slaves is somewhat unique, especially in a movie aimed at children.

The moment that crystallized my feelings toward Legend of the Guardians came toward the end.  After growing up with tales of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Soren is happy to tell his father that the Guardians are not just legend, but are real.  His father's response was, "You made them real."  At first glance, it looks like the meaningless "kids rawk" fluff that often pops up in animated movies.  But this was so blatantly wrong that my wife got seriously irritated.  She actually raised her voice to ask, "HOW?  They already exist!"  My wife doesn't like every movie, but she doesn't loudly question movies very often.  To put that in perspective, the last time she watched an animated feature and wasn't happy with it was G-Force.  Congrats, Legend of the Guardians, you are in elite company.  Apparently, there was not enough cute to counteract the dull and stupid here.

Sorry kid, not cute enough

Let's be honest, though.  This is a movie for kids, and the standards of entertainment for children are comically low.  Sadly, Legend of the Guardians doesn't quite meet those unimpressive standards.  There are a few moments that truly "wow" the viewer --- yes, they are in slow motion --- but they are not the most important or memorable parts of the plot.

This scene > rain flying

However, thanks to the dull story, these inconsequential scenes are what I remember most about this film.  The story is too dark to be cutesy, but there are characters clearly designed to just be cute.  And yet, the story is not dark enough to be frightening or to make the story less predictable.  Even the primary staple of animated movies, the goofy supporting character, is absent for most of this movie.  Yes, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole looks nice, but it is genuinely uninteresting and charmless.

Captain America: The First Avenger

What a difference a couple of decades makes!  When I was growing up in the 80s, the concept of a super-hero movie just didn't make sense to me; I actually refused to see Tim Burton's Batman in the theater because the only Batman I knew was Adam West, and I didn't want to see that on the big screen --- of course, that was long before I discovered the joys of shark repellant.  The 90s didn't help matters much, with Batman and Robin, the Dolph Lungren Punisher, and all the douchebags in my age group that dressed up as The Crow every damn year for Halloween.  Perhaps the least impressive super-hero movie of the time was the never-released-in-American-theaters and filmed-in-Yugoslavia Captain America.

Two words: rubber ears.

So, when it was announced that Captain America would get another chance at a movie as Marvel Studios builds up to The Avengers in 2012, I was a little nervous.  Sure, I liked the last few Marvel Studios movies --- Iron Man 2, Thor, and X-Men: First Class --- but a patriotically-themed super-hero movie could easily get hokey.  Oh, and I wasn't too impressed with director Joe Johnston's last movie, either.  Can Captain America: The First Avenger beat the odds and be yet another fun and successful comic book movie in the summer of 2011?

World War II is in full swing, and every able-bodied American man is joining the armed forces.  Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is not able-bodied --- he's been deemed 4F and is the personification of the old Charles Atlas ads --- but he keeps reapplying for the Army in the hopes that he will allowed to squeak through and risk his life, like all the other men.  After all, if every man he knows, including his buddy Bucky (Sebastian Stan), has the right to go to war, why can't he?  This perseverance catches the attention of Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who selects Rogers for an experiment.  He is allowed to train with some elite soldiers for the right to receive a highly experimental treatment and (possibly) become a new breed of soldier.  Through his positive attitude, bravery, intelligence, and perseverance, Steve Rogers was selected for the experiment, which took a man that looked like this:

...and turned him into a heaping bowl of hunk:

Judging from that scientist's gaze, Rogers grew more than muscles.

While the experiment was a success, Erskine was assassinated by a sneaky Nazi, taking his secret super-soldier formula to the grave.  I wouldn't have thought that a government-funded program would allow one person to keep all the secrets exclusively in his noggin, but origin stories are funny like that, sometimes.  Seeing that he is the only result from a very expensive military program, Rogers is not allowed to fight in the war; instead, he is forced to put on a gaudy costume and promote war bonds as Captain America. 

Captain America: sellout

That can only last so long, of course, since there is a war going on and there are bad guys to fight.  And I'm not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill evil Nazis, either; the bad guys in this movie want to destroy everything and create a new world order.

Is this the future?

Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen.  Despite the strength of the Allied Forces, it is ultimately up to Captain America and his new Army buddies to save the world from destruction at the hands of the nefarious Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).  Why only them?  Apparently, saving the world is a lower priority than you might think.

A lot of people were skeptical when Chris Evans was cast in the iconic (and fairly humorless) lead role of Captain America.  Since nobody has ever seen Sunshine, where he has a dramatic role, the fear was that Evans would be his goofy, sarcastic self, a la Ryan Reynolds.  I am happy to say that Evans did a good job in the lead role.  He was brave, earnest, and loyal; he basically took all the heroic parts in a war movie and rolled them up into one character.  Hugo Weaving was suitably dastardly as Red Skull; I don't know if I would say that he out-eviled the Nazis in this movie, but he came close.  His character's grand scheme didn't make a ton of sense to me, but everyone agreed that he was insane, so I'll let that slide.  I wasn't the biggest fan of his red-faced makeup --- I would have gone for a bumpier, burn victim look --- but I thought they did a good job with the makeup that implied that his Hugo Weaving face was a mask.

Odd...why didn't Weaving have a romantic interest?

The rest of the supporting cast was fine, but those two set the standard.  Hayley Atwell was pretty good as Roger's rough-and-tumble love interest, Peggy Carter, and she was happily never a damsel in distress.  Tommy Lee Jones was very good as the tired, crotchety colonel in charge of the super soldier experiment.  I was surprisingly moved by a look he gave of utter despair toward the end of the film; maybe that's just his sad face, but you rarely see tough guy actors look that vulnerable.  Stanley Tucci did a good job making the selection of Rogers seem rational, which was a bigger hurdle than you might think.  Sebastian Stan was okay as Rogers' buddy, but I thought Dominic Cooper was surprisingly likable as genius industrialist Howard Stark.  There are some other recognizable actors in the movie --- Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, and a few others --- but they played relatively small and generic parts, with the exception of Jones (an evil scientist) and Jackson (reprising his Nick Fury role).

Director Joe Johnston has a tendency of making movies set in the past, oftentimes romanticizing the idea of heroism, which actually makes him a pretty good fit for this film.  The goal of this movie was to make Captain America look cool and give him a grand enough task to make him a legend in this prequel to theMarvel super-hero movies that are set in modern times.

Hmm...that's a good start, but too subtle.

Johnston keeps a good pace throughout the film, wisely choosing to focus on pre-transformation Steve and a few choice, defining battles for Captain America, instead of bogging him down in a number of lesser battles.  I like a lot of choices he made here, especially the chaste romance between Cap and Peggy.

...although, the chaste bit might have been her doing.

Heroes that are squeaky-clean boy scouts can be tough to sympathize with or care about, because they're not terribly realistic.  Johnston chose to portray Captain America as less of a do-gooding patriot, instead focusing a lot of time and effort on Steve Rogers hating bullies.  I thought this movie handled all the typical war scenes well and had several moving this-is-a-war-movie-and-men-don't-cry-but-seriously-OMG-I'm-tearing-up-here moments.  I am generally a sucker for moments like those, but this movie was surprisingly good at them.

As much as I liked a lot of this movie, I had some small complaints.  First of all, this movie has a metric ton of CGI, especially with pre-transformation Steve Rogers.  While I think this was done pretty well, there were some moments where the head of Chris Evans didn't seem to fit the body, or where his height seemed inconsistent.  Not a huge deal, and it was impressive overall, but I still noticed it.  I also wasn't a huge fan of his costume.  It looked better than the 1990 movie version did, but I preferred this getup:

I realize that a super-hero with an established colorful costume needs to wear it at some point, but I just thought the blend of costume and practical clothing was a cool visual.  Perhaps my biggest gripe with Captain America: The First Avenger was its use of minor players.  This movie is filled to the brim with characters that are clearly meant to reference important characters in the comic character's history.  Unfortunately, since they are so many and time is so limited, these characters wind up being largely charmless.  Even Bucky, who plays an important role in the development of our hero, is not particularly likable.  They weren't bad actors or characters, they just never felt important.

But those are minor complaints.  This movie is filled with action that, while not terribly plausible, is very entertaining.  This film had heart and character, and it made Captain America look cool while fighting with a shield.  Oh, and the teaser trailer for The Avengers after the credits was a geeky thrill.

While I was researching pictures for this post, I stumbled across a brilliant blog, titled Hitler Getting Punched.  I like when a title explains everything I need to know about a website.  Check it out.

I also happened across this officially commissioned painted poster that was given to the cast and crew of the movie:

 I love retro movie posters.  The artist maintains his own blog about his comic art, called The Self-Absorbing Man.  Pretty cool stuff.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After I caught Willard in the theater several years ago, I heard another theatergoer remark, "Worst.  Movie.  Ever."  One of my friends (or possibly, me --- it's been a while) loudly countered with, "I don't know about you guys, but I paid to see a movie about rats, and that's what I got."  Expectations can be a tricky thing with movies.  Too high, and you're likely to be disappointed, too low and you'll forgive just about anything.  I was a pretty big Transformers fan as a child, so I was super excited when the first film went into production; then I realized that Michael Bay was directing it, and those expectations dropped considerably.  I've seen all three Transformers movies in theaters now (four, counting the animated one), and I have entered each film with the same expectation: giant robots fighting each other.  Sure, other filler stuff might happen, but that is what the movies need to satisfy me.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon begins with a Transformer spacecraft crash landing on the moon in the early 1960s.  The knowledge of that crash created the space race, which culminated in the Apollo 11 space walk.  You might have thought the space race was a time of scientific achievement and ridiculous funding, but it was all a ruse; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's true mission was to investigate an enormous space wreck.  It makes you wonder what Tom Hanks would have done if Apollo 13 had been successful, eh?

In the present time, the Autobots (the good Trannies) are spending their time hunting for any left over Decepticons (the bad Trannies) that survived Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  To kill time between giant robot fights, they help out the US government by apparently fighting terrorism.

Presumably pictured above: a member of Seal Team 6

On a mission in Chernobyl (tourism motto: the playground of Eastern Europe), the Autobots find a fuel cell from The Ark, an Autobot ship that was damaged as it left the Transformer home planet of Cybertron.  Autobot leader Optimus Prime and the other good Trannies head out to the moon and investigate the wreckage, finding the inactive (but not dead) Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) and some important devices.  These devices, called "pillars," can create a space bridge capable of transporting large amounts of stuff across the universe.  Like what?  Oh, I don't know, maybe...an invading force of Decepticons?  Clearly, Sentinel Prime and the pillars must be kept safe from the Decepticons and their leader, Megatron.  One thing that troubles me, though, is what happened to the several hundred other pillars that were supposed to be on The Ark...

Oh, and there are some stupid human subplots that involve Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) trying to find a joe job and dealing with the pressures of living with a fantastically successful girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) who could pass as an underwear model.  These stresses help shape Sam into an ungrateful, whiny man-child and lead to all sorts of awkward and "comical" interactions with the likes of John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk, and a slumming Frances McDormand.

Yeah, I'd be pissed if I wore white that day, too.

I know that the acting in this movie is probably the furthest thing from your mind, but I have to comment on it.  I hate Shia LaBeouf in this movie.  He is such a dick to everyone else and he keeps getting rewarded for it.  There was one moment, where he had to choose between his girlfriend (who he can have sex with) and Optimus Prime (who he probably can't have sex with), that could have made up for the rest of his bitchy performance --- but that incredibly difficult decision ended up having no impact on the greater plot, so who cares what happened?  I thought Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who more or less replaced Megan Fox as Shia's romantic lead, did a surprisingly good job in her role.  Sure, she was a damsel in distress, had no good lines of dialogue, a bizarre fetish for rabbits, and apparently was hiding a Machiavellian streak for most of the film, but she did a pretty solid job of what she had to work with.  I have to admit, though, that my favorite scene in the movie is the extended shot of her staring blankly into the distance as Transformers blow stuff up behind her.  That made me laugh out loud.  As for the rest of the cast, Patrick Dempsey was MWA-HA-HA evil, Frances McDormand was a bureaucrat, John Malkovich was comic relief, and Ken Jeong delivered the same ridiculous performance that is normally expected out of him.  Nobody was great, but nobody was awful (although that depends on your Jeong tolerance).  Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson return as the sexiest robot fighters the US military has to offer, as do the eternally chatty/embarrassing/migrane-inducing Witwicky parents, played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White.  How these characters have all survived three robot battles is beyond logic.  Speaking of which, John Turturro returns to cash another paycheck as a goofy former secret government agent, this time accompanied by his fey butler, played by Alan Tudyk.  These two are responsible for some of the worst lines in the movie, but I'll give Tudyk credit for actually making me smile a couple of times.

As with the other Transformers movies, the coolest characters are still the giant robots.  We see the return of Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving again), and Starscream, as well as some of the supporting Autobots, but only Bumblebee and Optimus get a decent amount of screen time.  Megatron spends the film with a gaping hole in his skull that is being slowly repaired by insect Transformers and I only noticed Starscream when he stopped by to chat with Megatron.  The two big additions to the robo-cast this year were Sentinel Prime and Shockwave.

If they made a fourth film, I want an Autobot with fat Elvis sideburns.

Sentinel was voiced by Leonard Nimoy and, for reasons I still can't comprehend, has a goatee.  Sure, it's a robotic goatee that probably transforms into something else (a Van Dyke, maybe?), but it's damned odd.  Anyway, I wasn't impressed with his design or the "unpredictable" twists he provides to the general plot.

I was similarly under-impressed with Shockwave.  He was the toughest villain in the movie and he was more of an ominous general that commands the big worm-looking thing than anything else.  I don't even remember him transforming into anything.  Whatever, he had a pretty sweet final scene, even if they did change up his character design significantly from the cartoon.

Shockwave: bustiest of all Decepticons!

I've never been a big fan of Michael Bay, either as a director or a producer.  At his best, he makes nonsensical action movies with meaningless catch phrases.  At his worst, he combines spectacular destruction sequences with extreme melodrama.  The Transformers series, to me, has always leaned toward Bay's worst tendencies.  Yes, the action sequences are pretty damn cool, especially for fans of the toys.  The human elements in the stories, though, are just an annoying distraction from robots punching each other.  This time around, Bay managed to make Shia LaBeouf far less likable than ever before and he threw in as much random supporting character "humor" as he could, in an attempt to disguise a paper-thin plot.  I'll give Bay credit, though.  The fight in Chicago looked pretty cool.  But there was at least ninety minutes of crappy movie before that.

It was a lot of fun to see giant robots destroy downtown Chicago, though.  As a Chicagoland native, there was a little thrill whenever I saw something I recognized getting blown up or ravaged by a giant Transformer worm thing (that transforms into...?).  The action scenes in general were all loud and fast, and (most importantly) featured giant robots fighting each other.  My complaint with the action in this movie is the same as with all the movies.  Aside from Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Megatron --- who are all given prominent speaking roles and are visually different from the other 'bots --- most of the fighting robots were interchangeable.  The Decepticons rarely had any colors to differentiate them from each other and the Autobots were still poorly developed, even after two previous films.

The winner of MTV's "Pimp My Autobot"

Action scenes would happen, and I would catch the gist of them (good robots vs. evil robots, right?), but there was rarely a time where I could explain who was actually fighting on screen, why, or where they were, in comparison to the other characters.  I was also a little uncomfortable with Optimus Prime acting as a vengeance machine.  He actually states that he (and the Autobots) will kill all the Decepticons.  That's awfully final and brutal for a hero, Optimus.  At the end of the movie, he actually executes a Decepticon --- the other character is begging for mercy and he snuffs them!  That's some cold shit for a PG-13 movie.

Action something something explosion

For every fight scene that entertained me or made me geek-out a little, there was about thirty minutes of truly awful movie.  The emotional weight of the story rested on sympathizing with Sam Witwicky --- who grew up wealthy and has only dated model-quality women --- as he tries to find a job where he is important.  Those are readily found in entry-level positions, right?  At least we get to see him have trouble committing to a beautiful woman for the second straight movie.  His whining about finding a job is more annoying as we see how "comically" bad he is at interviewing; the interviews were another thing --- who manages to get five or six sit-down interviews in the same day?  Apparently, someone who wears jeans to big-boy job interviews in Washington, DC.  Jackass.

There is a lot to hate about Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The plot is dull and predictable.  The script tries and fails to be funny over and over again.  The action is often confusing; the cinematography frequently made it difficult who was fighting who.  The acting was mediocre at best.  The movie was two-and-a-half hours long, with the only fun stuff in the extended final 45-minute fight scene!  They never try to explain why the Decepticons pick Chicago as a place to stage their invasion!!  Wouldn't their evil plan cause the Earth to crash into Cybertron?!?  Most Decepticons on Earth take the form of cars; when Sam is running away from a man who admitted to working for the Decepticons, he hops into a car that was owned by that man!!!  And how bad were the special effects in the early scenes that bridged the gaps between 1960s news reels and the rest of the movie?  Worst Presidential impressions ever.

And yet, none of that really seems to matter.  This is a movie about giant robots fighting each other.  Do you really expect anything else?  From a quality film perspective, this film deserves a pitiful rating of

From the perspective of someone looking for giant robots killing each other, the movie is actually much, much more entertaining.  If you combine that love of action with a desire to laugh at Michael Bay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a solid Lefty Gold rating.  Watching Chicago get ruined is pretty entertaining, but the rest of the film's awfulness more or less balances that out.

I would bump the entire movie up six stars if this scene actually happened, but sadly, it is just someone making great use of Photoshop.

The Wolfman (Unrated)

Hollywood and the American public have a short memory.  That's a good thing, since Hollywood loves to remake films.  Sometimes it works, like with Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Maltese Falcon (1941), or Batman (1989).  Sometimes it fails spectacularly, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) or Psycho (1998).  Most of the time, though, remakes fail to leave any mark on the public consciousness ("Jeff Daniels was in a King Kong remake?  The Dumb and Dumber guy?"), and usually deservedly so.  The Wolfman is a remake of the 1941 movie, The Wolf Man, which starred Lon Chaney Jr. in his signature role.  This time, the ill-fated Lawrence Talbot is played by Benicio del Toro.  Will his interpretation be the one that we remember, or will it fade into obscurity over time?

You know a character is going to be a fun-loving party dude when his first scene has him playing Hamlet on the stage, despite being at least ten years older than the character.  That is where we find Lawrence Talbot in 1891 London, just before he is informed of his brother's disappearance by Gwen (Emily Blunt), who is engaged to he missing brother.  His brother lived on their family estate with their father, so Lawrence boards a train for his home town of Blackmoor; on the train Lawrence encounters a stranger (Max von Sydow), who wants to give Lawrence a fine cane with a silver wolf's head for the handle.  Lawrence refuses the kind offer, only to jerk himself awake the next moment, alone in the compartment.  But look...!  The cane is where the man was sitting.  Or was he?  The mystery will remain forever unsolved, because this scene was apparently cut from the theatrical version and has no bearing on the core plot.  Thanks for showing up, Max. 

Lawrence arrives home and greets his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), who is a weird guy.  Think latter day Ted Nugent meets that creepy, quiet guy who stares at people in the library.  The reason the two men are estranged has something to do with the suicide of Lawrence's mother (Christina Contes), although it's not clear exactly why.  Anyway, the missing Talbot brother has turned up dead, so Lawrence goes to the morgue and takes a look.  Apparently, his brother was delicious, because there's not much left of him.  Lawrence then returns to London to use this tragedy as fuel for his dramatic tendencies, the end.

"Hey, that's not how it goes!"  No kidding.  We all know that Lawrence is going to get bitten by a werewolf.  Just like all werewolf movies, there are going to be scenes where he is physically changing, but has no idea what's happening to him, and just like all werewolf movies, his werewolf self will attack some people, probably fatally.  That's the problem with remaking classic movies.  Even if the audience is not familiar with original film, they have been exposed to its plot elements in other films that were influenced by the original.  And since this is a serious film, you know just as certainly that the werewolf won't be playing basketball or singing along to "Werewolves of London." 

The Wolfman does a good job of staying true to the original material, for better or for worse.  Technically, this is a pretty good looking film.  The cinematography captures the creepy vibe that Gothic horror requires.  The action sequences are entertaining, filled with high-quality gore.  I don't know what this unrated version included that the theatrical did not, but I'm guessing it might involve some of the near-disembowelings.  The special effects, while good, sometimes feel out of place, though.  When Lawrence transforms into a werewolf, the transformation process looks like a character from Beowolf was transposed over Benicio del Toro.  Once he's fully transformed and in makeup, he looks great.  Unfortunately, having noticeable CGI in a movie set in the 1890s feels anachronistic.  That's not the only instance of that problem; the city of London looks fake at points, and the werewolves, when they run, appear surprisingly weightless.  Details like that add up quickly over two hours.

The acting and directing also have strong moments and weak ones.  Benicio del Toro is good in his werewolf persona, but his human self is awkward and uninteresting.  Anthony Hopkins does a good job with his nonverbal actions, coming across as someone who enjoys the thrill of the hunt, but I felt that he just mailed in the rest of his performance.  I'm pretty sure his explanation of his character would be "How about a jerk that is thinking about other things when you speak to him?"  Emily Blunt was fine, but she and del Toro never had the chemistry you need for a convincing love story.  That leaves Hugo Weaving, who played a Scotland Yard detective investigating the murders, as the only important part that was acted well.  You could (and should) blame director Joe Johnston for the film's acting problems, but he didn't do a bad job.  None of the acting (except maybe Hopkins) was bad, it was just very reserved.  I liked the way he told the story, even if I didn't particularly like the script.

I think the biggest obstacle to this film was setting it in Victorian England.  I understand that Gothic horror stories take place in the Victorian era, but it is a time very far removed from the present.  When the first wave of classic horror movies were made (Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man), they were set about fifty years in the past, instead the120 years that now separate the present from Victorian times.  I think that time difference makes it more difficult to identify with the characters.  The best movies that use this time period are the ones that use the notoriously repressed Victorian emotions and show the passions that lay beneath the calm exterior.  So, basically, romances.  Modern horror movies set in this time period don't have the luxury of convincing love stories, and that is one of the main reasons that Bram Stoker's Dracula was underwhelming and why Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was so painful to watch.  The Wolfman is filled with characters that are humorless and devoid of passion, and that makes this visually attractive movie less than stellar.

This film is not devoid of quality.  I thought the action was well done (except for the final battle --- that was lame) and I liked how bloody it was.  This movie definitely had promise, but it was handicapped by the filmmakers' desire to stay true to the original.  It ended up being pretty predictable (which I can deal with in remakes) and the characters were left emotionally undeveloped (which is never a good choice).  When you add it all up, you are left with yet another forgettable Hollywood remake.