I remember seeing a preview for this at the theater with a friend of mine, I remember leaning over to her and stating "that looks cheesy as hell." When it arrived in theaters...I smartly avoided it, saving my viewing of it for it's recent "Cinemax" premier. I'm glad.
The star power is there...so how did this manage to go horribly wrong? Well, some of the opening shots of the landscape, etc., and the Gothic gray tone are alright. But it quickly delves into a convoluted, snooze inducing, borefest.
Supposedly Del Toro was on board and gung ho about the project since 2006. Really? You couldn't tell. Del Toro looks and sounds bored, and delivers a more wooden performance than Pinnochio.
Hopkins likewise seems to phone in his performance, not much can be said about him as he exudes about as much excitement as a stagnant puddle. Normally I enjoy him a great deal, when this movie ended there was little that I could remember about him other than he played the Harmonica and hated his sons.
I felt sorry for Hugo Weaving as it seems he at least tried to be interested in his role...(the only one who seemed to be) but sadly he is underutilized as a generic Scotland yard inspector. It almost seemed about halfway through he realized what a horrible error he had made accepting this role.
There was no chemistry between any of the leads, the "love" story (if you could even call it that) felt forced, and Del Toro and Blunt had zero chemistry. Blunt herself, was terrible. She never seems sorry, or mournful, or shocked at the horrible death of her fiancé. Half hearted pleas of "stay with me." Seemed to solidify her non chalantness of the situation at hand.
I wondered how it was possible to make a movie about werewolves boring. Brother is killed by werewolf, other brother returns, other brother and dad don't like each other, other brother is bit, becomes werewolf, father is werewolf also, they fight, house burns down, other brother wins, other brother is killed, numerous flashbacks to mother's death, and other scenes you care nothing about.
There's also some crap thrown in about Hopkins's werewolf origin as he stumbles across Gollum in a cave some years earlier and is bitten. Seriously? All the CGI computer guys you had at work on this, and this is the best looking thing they could come up with? A LOTR rip off?
There's no redemption for any character, nor did I care about what happened to any of them, every single situation is predictable, the outcome...just as predictable, CGI is overused, cheap looking, and horribly fake, (werewolves look like furbies) and the ratio of werewolf screen time vs. human story screen time is vastly off balance.
Gore is over the top and pointless. How many times do you need to see people beheaded, organs ripped from bodies, limbs ripped, throats gouged, and claws impaling through things before you figure out that the werewolves are "really bad guys" with zero characteristics, attitudes, or personalities outside of ripping apart people, nor do they seem of any intelligence as they never seem to be able to weed out "bad" people from innocent bystanders. This combined with cardboard cutout human characters give the audience nothing to latch onto or cheer for. (Did you feel the least bit bad or upset when Del Toro's werewolf was killed? No? Neither did I.)
Del Toro's werewolf also displays nothing different from the werewolf persona of his father or any other werewolf in this hot mess. What a dragging, depressing, joyless, lame, poorly scripted movie, and a waste of actors who have genuine talent. Avoid at all costs.
The star power is there...so how did this manage to go horribly wrong? Well, some of the opening shots of the landscape, etc., and the Gothic gray tone are alright. But it quickly delves into a convoluted, snooze inducing, borefest.
Supposedly Del Toro was on board and gung ho about the project since 2006. Really? You couldn't tell. Del Toro looks and sounds bored, and delivers a more wooden performance than Pinnochio.
Hopkins likewise seems to phone in his performance, not much can be said about him as he exudes about as much excitement as a stagnant puddle. Normally I enjoy him a great deal, when this movie ended there was little that I could remember about him other than he played the Harmonica and hated his sons.
I felt sorry for Hugo Weaving as it seems he at least tried to be interested in his role...(the only one who seemed to be) but sadly he is underutilized as a generic Scotland yard inspector. It almost seemed about halfway through he realized what a horrible error he had made accepting this role.
There was no chemistry between any of the leads, the "love" story (if you could even call it that) felt forced, and Del Toro and Blunt had zero chemistry. Blunt herself, was terrible. She never seems sorry, or mournful, or shocked at the horrible death of her fiancé. Half hearted pleas of "stay with me." Seemed to solidify her non chalantness of the situation at hand.
I wondered how it was possible to make a movie about werewolves boring. Brother is killed by werewolf, other brother returns, other brother and dad don't like each other, other brother is bit, becomes werewolf, father is werewolf also, they fight, house burns down, other brother wins, other brother is killed, numerous flashbacks to mother's death, and other scenes you care nothing about.
There's also some crap thrown in about Hopkins's werewolf origin as he stumbles across Gollum in a cave some years earlier and is bitten. Seriously? All the CGI computer guys you had at work on this, and this is the best looking thing they could come up with? A LOTR rip off?
There's no redemption for any character, nor did I care about what happened to any of them, every single situation is predictable, the outcome...just as predictable, CGI is overused, cheap looking, and horribly fake, (werewolves look like furbies) and the ratio of werewolf screen time vs. human story screen time is vastly off balance.
Gore is over the top and pointless. How many times do you need to see people beheaded, organs ripped from bodies, limbs ripped, throats gouged, and claws impaling through things before you figure out that the werewolves are "really bad guys" with zero characteristics, attitudes, or personalities outside of ripping apart people, nor do they seem of any intelligence as they never seem to be able to weed out "bad" people from innocent bystanders. This combined with cardboard cutout human characters give the audience nothing to latch onto or cheer for. (Did you feel the least bit bad or upset when Del Toro's werewolf was killed? No? Neither did I.)
Del Toro's werewolf also displays nothing different from the werewolf persona of his father or any other werewolf in this hot mess. What a dragging, depressing, joyless, lame, poorly scripted movie, and a waste of actors who have genuine talent. Avoid at all costs.