An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Directed by Anthony Waller
When you take longer than 4 years to make a sequel, you probably shouldn’t make it. Just saying. I mean honestly did An American Werewolf in London really need a sequel 16 years later? I guess that’s what I’m doing here, trying to find out.
I remember seeing this trailer as a kid, I was about 11ish when this movie came out and I was really starting to get into horror at the time. The main thing I remember from the trailer was a girl straddling a guy and she slowly pulls her shirt up and right before you got to see her tits she turned into a werewolf and the guy screamed. I’ll forever remember that and at the time I thought it was so cool and I wanted to see this movie. I was in my phase of thinking I Know What You Did Last Summer was the greatest movie of all time so my taste in movies was questionable, at best. This year was the first time I watched this movie, thus fulfilling my preteen desire haha.
Plot wise, it is your typical werewolf flick. Guy becomes a werewolf, he looks for a cure, transforms numerous times and kills some people. The movie starts off with three tools backpacking through Europe talking about the stunts they have done (bungee jumping) and the girls they’ve bagged. This kind of character is really dated now, you saw it a lot in movies from the late 90s and early to mid 2000s. The group of guys heads to Paris where Andy the main character tells his friends he’s going to score big points for a stunt he has planned. Instantly I’m thinking “well he’s bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower” and when they get there, they go to the Eiffel Tower. I laughed at how obvious it was but I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Anyway Andy sets up his cord on his leg and they see a girl walk to the edge, then stand there crying. When she goes to fall to her death Andy talks to her and tells her not to do it, pleading. She jumps and Andy jumps after her, she jumps a legit 3 seconds before him, but somehow he catches up and grabs her feet. His cord isn’t attached and his friends Chris and Brad (standard movie dbag names) grab the cord and somehow, impossibly keep it on the tower. The girl slowly slips out of her shoes and falls gently to the ground before Andy springs back up. Andy slams his head on the Eiffel Tower and wakes up in a hospital. From there he searches for the girl, they find her and she tells them to go away, but then after Andy’s persistence she agrees to meet him the next day. He finds out her name is Serafine (naturally) and that she has a strange powerful side to her. Anyways…not going to explain scene by scene but basically they stumble across a cult of Werewolves and Andy becomes one. He searches for the cure with Serafine and hijinks ensue.
The special effects are so incredibly dated. Early CGI is laughable. The 1981 original looked way better with makeup and practical effects, the CGI is Playstation 2 levels of quality. The werewolves look bad, really bad. Not just the dated CGI but just the overall shape and appearance of the werewolves is odd. They look too human, just give me a bipedal wolf and I’m satisfied I don’t need to be able to see that they are part human, it just looks lame. There is a fair amount of blood but nothing too cool to really talk about.
How about the acting? Well…the acting is on par for movies of that teen comedy genre. When the three main characters are mild versions of Steve Stiffler, you tend to get dull to the jokes. The guys are obsessed with getting laid and doing dumb stunts. It is dumb what can I say? Nobody does a good job and the girl that plays Serafine is so incredibly wooden that I want to punch her.
Probably the worst part of this movie is the uneven tone. This really feels like an American Pie movie. You get your dumb penis jokes and complete douchebag moments, especially from Chris the pretty boy. I understand that London had some comedic moments but the overall tone of the film is never in jeopardy. It was more of a dark comedy whilst Paris goes from dick and fart jokes to a werewolf ripping someone’s throat out. I had a hard time watching this in parts because of that, lots and lots of eyerolls. The scene I remembered so vividly from the trailer back in 1997, yeah that was a dream, so the one part I thought was cool as a preteen was misleading. Cool!
Man, I really can’t believe how bad this was. It had a $25M budget and they only made $26M, I can easily see why. Most of the money was probably spent filming this shit in Paris. The CGI was Spawn levels of bad and the acting was so ham fisted that you can’t take it seriously. This isn’t a good movie, and it isn’t bad enough to watch and laugh at. I watched it finally, now I don’t have to watch it again! That is probably the most exciting thing about it. I would give it a D-, not an F because I did watch the whole thing, but what do I know? Buzz Weekly gave it 4 STARS!!!!!
