**1/4
Starring Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, Geraldine Chaplin and Art Malik.
Directed by Joe Johnston.
This movie had a $150 million production budget, and every penny of $100 million of it shows up on screen. I don't know where the rest of the money went, maybe on scenes they wound up cutting and reshooting, but the final hodge-podge is cheesy Hammer-horror B-movie fun that was enjoyable as I watched it, but evaporated the second I left the theater.
For one thing, it's not scary ever. They might as well have cut the fifteen seconds of gore and aimed at a braoder PG-13 audience. The movie also kept going places that felt like a wasted opportunity. I kept thinking what I would have done with the same basic story.
Benecio Del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, heir to a fortune who comes home to his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins) after his brother is viciously murdered. Seems there might be a werewolf about. The movie makes it obvious from the start who that initial werewolf might be, and after a full moon, Lawrence himself is bit. One full moon later...
The moon aspect was fun. There's one part in the movie where it seems like three days have passed and suddenly it's another full-moon night. "I guess all of that took a month...?"
I enjoy Hopkins in anything. I had fun watching him chew scenery and thinking to myself, "He's been in Dracula and the Wolfman, so now we need a Frankenstein reboot..." There are times Del Toro has the look of the only actor in the room who didn't get a script but he'll be a good sport until someone yells "Cut!"
It is entertaining for what it is, but it by no means a good movie.
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