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When Good Werewolf Movies Go Bad - An American WereWolf in Paris (In-Depth Review)
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS
Stars:
Tom Everett ScottasAndy McDermott Julie Delpy
asSerafine Pigot Vince Vieluf asBrad Phil Buckman asChris Pierre Cosso as Claude Julie Bowen asAmy Finch Directed by Anthony Waller
Welcome to the 2nd edition of When Good WereWolf Movies Go Bad.
This is where I review werewolf movies that either had a proming start and failed to keep going throughout the film or had a proming story that just fell flat.
Today I will review the often criticized and hardly loved debacle that was An American WereWolf in Paris. An American WereWolf in Paris is the clasc tale of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl as she tries to kill herself, girl turns out to be a werewolf.
At least I hope that was the pitch that the screenwriters used to sell this sequel. Anyway, our story actually begins quite proming on the dark streets of Paris.
We see Dr. Pigot running for his life from something chang him.
There is a full moon so we immediatly know what's behind him.
The opening is in a lot of ways an homage to Jaws.
We know there is a monster there but we never see it so our imagination does the work for us.
The stalk and kill scene is very well done but could have benefitted from dropping the whole werewolf p.o.v. shots.
There is more tenon without them. Then we meet our heroes: Andy, Chris, and Brad.
They are three friends on a Daredevil trip to see who can to the most outrageous stunts and points are scored accordingly.
I'm going to pause in my review here.
Just imagine this.
A Daredevil Tour where points for outrageous stunts are awarded.
Now picture one or all of the contestants as werewolves with the werewolves powers.
That story almost writes itself.
Anyway, we learn that Andy is way behind in points but he promises his friends that when they get to Paris he is going to perform a stunt that none of them will be able to top. When they arrive in Paris they hide in the Eiffel Tower.
Andy reveals that his stunt is going to be bungee jumping off of the Tower.
That night after everyone has gone, the Tower is closed, and a Full Moon hangs in the sky Andy gets ready for his jump.
But before he can perform this stunt a mysterious French woman, Serafine Pigot, appears and after looking sadly up at the moon, prepares to jump to her death off of the Tower.
For reasons that go entirely against his character Andy instantly falls in love with Serafine and tries to talk her off of the ledge.
She jumps anyway.
Andy also jumps and grabs hold of her shoe just in time to save her, but not himself because he bounces back up and smacks his head on a crossbeam and hospitalizes himself.
Those are the breaks. Through a series of unlikely events the three friends track down Serafine to her home.
She tells them to go away and they meet her friend Claude.
Claude "loves Americans" and invites them to a party that night at a club he knows of.Andy and Brad go to the party leaving Chris to go to Serafine's house looking for her.
Chris is cornered by Serafine and tells her that Andy and Brad went to Claude's party and Serafine locks him in the basement. Meanwhile, Andy and Brad have ended up in the sewer under the club.
Brad is attacked and viciously killed by a werewolf.
Andy, however, is able to fend off an attack and stabs the werewolf with a rod from an old sewer gate but not before being bitten by the monster.Serafine finds Andy and takes him home to nurse him back to health.
She tells him that nce he was bitten by a werewolf and survived that he will now become a werewolf at the next full moon.
He of course doesn't believe her.
Never mind what he saw with his own eyes the previous night.
Andy hears Serafine talking to her mother which he finds strange because she has told him already that both of her parents are dead.
Andy looks into a mirror and sees a decaying corpse instead of Jenny Agutter.
Yes in case you haven't guessed it, Serafine is the daughter of David and the nurse in the first movie.
IMDB.com reports that this is revealed in a scene that was deleted from the final cut.
Serafine goes downstairs to make Andy a blood and gore milkshake and we find out that Chris has escaped from the basement and he in turn helps Andy escape from Serafine's house. Andy sees a vion of Brad, not unlike David in the original, and Brad also tells him that he was bitten by a werewolf and will become one when the full moon rises that night.
Andy again doesn't believe it.
At this point you begin to wonder if maybe Andy is a little mentally retarded.
Serafine telling him he is a werewolf and he doesn't believe it is one thing but when your best friend whom you know for a fact is dead and comes back to life and tells you you should probably believe him.
This is a case of the script being smarter than Andy. That night, as the full moon rises, Andy gets hungry for meat.
He dines on greasy steaks and even picks up a girl named Amy Finch.
They go to a local cemetary for sex but are interrupted when Andy suddenly darts away because his skin is burning hot.
He dives into a pool of water where the impreson is given that he turns into a werewolf.
I say this because they show a lot of Amy and a lot of someone splashing around in the water and you really don't get to see much of the transformation.
Which is a shame because most werewolf pictures love to show that first transformation scene off.
The werewolf stalks and kills Amy and her dog. The next morning Andy is found naked ontop of the dog, wonder what happened there, and is surrounded by police officers who obviously think Andy killed Amy.
Who wouldn't? Amy also turns up as a decaying corpse and proceeds to have a bitch fit about it and gets into an arguement with Brad.
Brad reveals that the only way for Andy to break the curse is by killing the werewolf who turned him.Claude and his friends grab Andy and take him to an old church where they reveal that they are also werewolves and that if Andy wants to live he is going to have to prove his loyalty to them.
How?
By killing Chris who is chained up in the basement.
Andy refuses and Serafine rescues him from Claude and his posse.
But strangely leaves Chris behind still chained up.
Some friend. Serafine reveals to Andy that her stepfather, Dr. Pigot, had invented a serum he had hoped would cure her of her werewolfism but it had caused her to turn instead.
She killed her mother and mortally wounded her stepfather.
Now Claude wants the serum.
Why?
Who knows.
Serafine also reveals that she was the one who bit Andy that night.
Now Andy is faced with a delema.
Can he kill Serafine? Claude ends up stealing the serum and that night he has a rave and invites Americans only to it.
The plan?
He and his guys are going to inject themselves and slaughter everyone. Serafine and Andy arrive as the massacre begins and the fight is taken into the underground tunnels where Serafine, after being injected and turning into a werewolf, is mortally wounded.
Andy is enraged and tracks the Claude Werewolf to the subway where Claude turns human again.
Claude and Andy fight and Andy sees the wound on Claude's shoulder and remembers the werewolf he wounded the night he was bitten.
Andy injects himself with the serum and tears Claude's heart out breaking the curse on both himself and Serafine. An American WereWolf in Paris is a film that is mply plagued with problems.
To begin with the transformations and even the werewolves themselves are all CGI.
Not one man in a suit is to be found and the CGI isn't even that well done so it takes you out of the film there.
It is also a film that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It starts out okay but the minute the werewolves are introduced the film turns away from Andy and Serafine and focuses primarily on the werewolves.
Julie Delpy seems frustrated in this film like she wants to take her character in one direction but no one will let her do that.
Tom Everett Scott just seems to go with the flow and never really takes anything too seriously.
I am not saying that the film isn't well acted because it is.
It's the story that lets them down.A sequel to a clasc can work.
See Psycho 2.
This story doesn't work.
I believe that story that would have worked would have been a movie that focused primarily on Serafine.
She was born of a werewolf dad and a human mom.
What was her life like growing up?
How did she handle know what her father was?
Was she viewed as different?
Was she feared?
That is the story I would like to have seen.
In this film you really don't care about her at all.
It makes one wonder if when the film wrapped production and the footage shown to the heads of the film company if they just didn't know how to market this film or what to make of it.
Could this story have worked?
Sure.
Get Stephen King to do a rewrite and John Carpenter to direct it.
My final verdict:
**1/2
out of *****
http://youtu.be/tKncKICpPqs
Stars:
Tom Everett ScottasAndy McDermott Julie Delpy
asSerafine Pigot Vince Vieluf asBrad Phil Buckman asChris Pierre Cosso as Claude Julie Bowen asAmy Finch Directed by Anthony Waller
Welcome to the 2nd edition of When Good WereWolf Movies Go Bad.
This is where I review werewolf movies that either had a proming start and failed to keep going throughout the film or had a proming story that just fell flat.
Today I will review the often criticized and hardly loved debacle that was An American WereWolf in Paris. An American WereWolf in Paris is the clasc tale of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl as she tries to kill herself, girl turns out to be a werewolf.
At least I hope that was the pitch that the screenwriters used to sell this sequel. Anyway, our story actually begins quite proming on the dark streets of Paris.
We see Dr. Pigot running for his life from something chang him.
There is a full moon so we immediatly know what's behind him.
The opening is in a lot of ways an homage to Jaws.
We know there is a monster there but we never see it so our imagination does the work for us.
The stalk and kill scene is very well done but could have benefitted from dropping the whole werewolf p.o.v. shots.
There is more tenon without them. Then we meet our heroes: Andy, Chris, and Brad.
They are three friends on a Daredevil trip to see who can to the most outrageous stunts and points are scored accordingly.
I'm going to pause in my review here.
Just imagine this.
A Daredevil Tour where points for outrageous stunts are awarded.
Now picture one or all of the contestants as werewolves with the werewolves powers.
That story almost writes itself.
Anyway, we learn that Andy is way behind in points but he promises his friends that when they get to Paris he is going to perform a stunt that none of them will be able to top. When they arrive in Paris they hide in the Eiffel Tower.
Andy reveals that his stunt is going to be bungee jumping off of the Tower.
That night after everyone has gone, the Tower is closed, and a Full Moon hangs in the sky Andy gets ready for his jump.
But before he can perform this stunt a mysterious French woman, Serafine Pigot, appears and after looking sadly up at the moon, prepares to jump to her death off of the Tower.
For reasons that go entirely against his character Andy instantly falls in love with Serafine and tries to talk her off of the ledge.
She jumps anyway.
Andy also jumps and grabs hold of her shoe just in time to save her, but not himself because he bounces back up and smacks his head on a crossbeam and hospitalizes himself.
Those are the breaks. Through a series of unlikely events the three friends track down Serafine to her home.
She tells them to go away and they meet her friend Claude.
Claude "loves Americans" and invites them to a party that night at a club he knows of.Andy and Brad go to the party leaving Chris to go to Serafine's house looking for her.
Chris is cornered by Serafine and tells her that Andy and Brad went to Claude's party and Serafine locks him in the basement. Meanwhile, Andy and Brad have ended up in the sewer under the club.
Brad is attacked and viciously killed by a werewolf.
Andy, however, is able to fend off an attack and stabs the werewolf with a rod from an old sewer gate but not before being bitten by the monster.Serafine finds Andy and takes him home to nurse him back to health.
She tells him that nce he was bitten by a werewolf and survived that he will now become a werewolf at the next full moon.
He of course doesn't believe her.
Never mind what he saw with his own eyes the previous night.
Andy hears Serafine talking to her mother which he finds strange because she has told him already that both of her parents are dead.
Andy looks into a mirror and sees a decaying corpse instead of Jenny Agutter.
Yes in case you haven't guessed it, Serafine is the daughter of David and the nurse in the first movie.
IMDB.com reports that this is revealed in a scene that was deleted from the final cut.
Serafine goes downstairs to make Andy a blood and gore milkshake and we find out that Chris has escaped from the basement and he in turn helps Andy escape from Serafine's house. Andy sees a vion of Brad, not unlike David in the original, and Brad also tells him that he was bitten by a werewolf and will become one when the full moon rises that night.
Andy again doesn't believe it.
At this point you begin to wonder if maybe Andy is a little mentally retarded.
Serafine telling him he is a werewolf and he doesn't believe it is one thing but when your best friend whom you know for a fact is dead and comes back to life and tells you you should probably believe him.
This is a case of the script being smarter than Andy. That night, as the full moon rises, Andy gets hungry for meat.
He dines on greasy steaks and even picks up a girl named Amy Finch.
They go to a local cemetary for sex but are interrupted when Andy suddenly darts away because his skin is burning hot.
He dives into a pool of water where the impreson is given that he turns into a werewolf.
I say this because they show a lot of Amy and a lot of someone splashing around in the water and you really don't get to see much of the transformation.
Which is a shame because most werewolf pictures love to show that first transformation scene off.
The werewolf stalks and kills Amy and her dog. The next morning Andy is found naked ontop of the dog, wonder what happened there, and is surrounded by police officers who obviously think Andy killed Amy.
Who wouldn't? Amy also turns up as a decaying corpse and proceeds to have a bitch fit about it and gets into an arguement with Brad.
Brad reveals that the only way for Andy to break the curse is by killing the werewolf who turned him.Claude and his friends grab Andy and take him to an old church where they reveal that they are also werewolves and that if Andy wants to live he is going to have to prove his loyalty to them.
How?
By killing Chris who is chained up in the basement.
Andy refuses and Serafine rescues him from Claude and his posse.
But strangely leaves Chris behind still chained up.
Some friend. Serafine reveals to Andy that her stepfather, Dr. Pigot, had invented a serum he had hoped would cure her of her werewolfism but it had caused her to turn instead.
She killed her mother and mortally wounded her stepfather.
Now Claude wants the serum.
Why?
Who knows.
Serafine also reveals that she was the one who bit Andy that night.
Now Andy is faced with a delema.
Can he kill Serafine? Claude ends up stealing the serum and that night he has a rave and invites Americans only to it.
The plan?
He and his guys are going to inject themselves and slaughter everyone. Serafine and Andy arrive as the massacre begins and the fight is taken into the underground tunnels where Serafine, after being injected and turning into a werewolf, is mortally wounded.
Andy is enraged and tracks the Claude Werewolf to the subway where Claude turns human again.
Claude and Andy fight and Andy sees the wound on Claude's shoulder and remembers the werewolf he wounded the night he was bitten.
Andy injects himself with the serum and tears Claude's heart out breaking the curse on both himself and Serafine. An American WereWolf in Paris is a film that is mply plagued with problems.
To begin with the transformations and even the werewolves themselves are all CGI.
Not one man in a suit is to be found and the CGI isn't even that well done so it takes you out of the film there.
It is also a film that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It starts out okay but the minute the werewolves are introduced the film turns away from Andy and Serafine and focuses primarily on the werewolves.
Julie Delpy seems frustrated in this film like she wants to take her character in one direction but no one will let her do that.
Tom Everett Scott just seems to go with the flow and never really takes anything too seriously.
I am not saying that the film isn't well acted because it is.
It's the story that lets them down.A sequel to a clasc can work.
See Psycho 2.
This story doesn't work.
I believe that story that would have worked would have been a movie that focused primarily on Serafine.
She was born of a werewolf dad and a human mom.
What was her life like growing up?
How did she handle know what her father was?
Was she viewed as different?
Was she feared?
That is the story I would like to have seen.
In this film you really don't care about her at all.
It makes one wonder if when the film wrapped production and the footage shown to the heads of the film company if they just didn't know how to market this film or what to make of it.
Could this story have worked?
Sure.
Get Stephen King to do a rewrite and John Carpenter to direct it.
My final verdict:
**1/2
out of *****
http://youtu.be/tKncKICpPqs
JohnCarpenterfan
Monday 2/27/2012 at 09:32 PM | 90850
Decent soundtrack though!
dew
Monday 2/27/2012 at 10:18 PM | 90851
Good point.
I bought the soundtrack after the movie came out because Walking on the Sun was featured in the film but it wasn't on the soundtrack.
Mouth was though and the cool theme.
Did dig the soundtrack. Wished Warren Zevon could have been on it.
I bought the soundtrack after the movie came out because Walking on the Sun was featured in the film but it wasn't on the soundtrack.
Mouth was though and the cool theme.
Did dig the soundtrack. Wished Warren Zevon could have been on it.
JohnCarpenterfan
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 02:44 AM | 90867
i thought this movie had nothing going for it really. personally, i thought the idea of the stunt contest was dumb from the start, and obviously the movie only goes down hill from there. bad, bad, bad.
darkdeepwoods16
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 04:18 AM | 90877
The best bit in the whole film is when the detectives dog is peeled off the floor after a night with the wolf, never fails to make me laugh
krsdacritter
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 06:28 PM | 90888
