I am the eggman, I am the wolfman, a coo coo cachoo a coo cachoo.

So, it's been abut 4 years since Universal put The Wolfman in full swing, I remember being in college and reading that the original director left during pre-production, fearing Brett Ratner's involvement, intrigued by what James Mangold would do, and being rather meh over Joe Johnson's hiring.

I never had an issue with Benecio Del Toro in the lead, I knew he loved The Wolfman and, well, this picture sums it up:

Just look at him. A perfect villain from the 40's, shaggy, slightly to imperfectly perfect, and yet you know you can't trust him.

And his voice. Oh that voice.
Unfortunately that single image has more gravitas than the whole of the finally released Wolfman 2008.

Whilst Benecio tries, he has little to do, a character written so dull that he's not only 1D, he's also left walking around the whole time, how can we care about the plight of he unwanted curse if the person behind the beast is so uninteresting?

The problem of uninterest hits the usually remarkable Emily Blunt, she still looks as bloody beautiful as ever, but the Kiera Knightey performance given is so painfully dull, more than a little restrained, and once more, no emotional connection.

Fortunately Anthony Hopkins as the father of Benecio is wonderful, a little crazy, a bit silly, very restrained, but weird, and entertaining. As is Hugo Weavin'g underused Police inspector. It's Hugo Weaving with a gun, a tache and on the hunt for a wolf beast, simple and well done.

It's a shame that the film's aesthetics are wonderful too, it's a well shot film, sans the horrible CGI, it looks brilliant, and has the creepy, near monotone look that could be recalled to the olden days, the music is a bit more generic, but Danny Elfman is pretty much stuck at that nowadays.

The practical effects look good. I mean real good. It's a shame they used so much CGI, not only does it ruin the brilliance of hiding in the shadows, barely seeing the evil, making things creepier, but the transformation would have been far better if it weren't CGI, it takes away from all believability.

It seems that studios are too scared to not use CGI in films these days, for fear I guess that without it everything looks silly. I saw clips without CGI back in 2008, and that was cracking stuff, subtle and simple. And with the 2 year wait, it seems that they edited the film so much to make it a much more modern film. The CGi is just part and parcel of it, the annoying jump scares which are too obvious and never work are in full force here, whereas a slow creep would have been spine-tingling, we just have a dog constantly barking as a scare, it's like freaking Daybreakers, and then mixing that with some slow, unfortunately poorly written scenes which have a more old fashioned way of going about business, and then some 80's schlock gore, mostly CGI too it seems, or at least caked in red computer pixels. The tone's constant shifting never helps, and a full 5 minutes near the end of Benecio hunting around the mansion waiting for the next loud noise scare is absolutely stupid, at no point did I care or get scared, and it's a shame that this film culd never offer me something I've been waiting years for.

Here's an image of Benecio after he realises what the end result is:



As bad as Dorian Gray.
2/10