An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

Director: Anthony Waller
Starring: Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy, Vince Vieluf

Synopsis:
A trio of Americans visiting Paris get entangled in an underground community of werewolves.

Impressions:
I remember not being all that impressed when I saw the trailers for this back in '97, and that was before I'd seen An American Werewolf in London. I'd heard this wasn't good, so I never bothered to see it, and I would've been content to never have seen it, but I needed a werewolf movie for this year's reviews, so it was between this or one of the Howling sequels. I couldn't tell you which would've been the better choice. Take everything that was good about AWiL. Now throw it out the window. That's pretty much this movie. The clown shoes go on pretty quick in this movie and most of the screentime is spent meticulously applying the clown makeup, sticking on the big red rubber nose and topping it off with the rainbow afro wig. There was some comedy in its predecessor, but it was also a genuine horror film and a rather good one at that. If horror is ever genuinely attempted in this movie, it's not very good. And while the first film had its amazing transformation sequence courtesy of Rick Baker's wizardry, here we've got bad late 90's CG. It looks awful, especially in the final dust-up, where we have two ugly brown CG blobs fighting amid a brown backdrop. You'll spend most of the movie cringing at the awkward comedy and poor special effects. The story, characters and performances are nothing to write home about. The main character is a massive dork, the lead female is fairly bland, and the main baddie isn't all that interesting. (And, seriously, the red lights should start going off when you hear a Frenchman say he loves Americans.) The most charitable soul might be willing to give the story some credit for trying to expand the lore with the whole Paris wolf pack, but we would've been served better by a simpler, more streamlined story. I don't have anything good to say about this and the only think that holds me back from giving this a "Burn It" is that it might serve as riffing material. Pass on this.

Rating:
Avoid It