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'American Werewolf' scores a zero

January 17, 1998
Web posted at: 3:22 p.m. EDT (1522 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I remember back in 1981 when John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London" came out. I was a chowder-headed high schooler, and my buddies and I thought the movie was a real blast.

It had a little bit of everything -- snide comedy, horror, special effects and a great-looking nurse with a British accent who liked to take her clothes off.

Striking nearly 20 years after the iron has cooled, director Anthony Waller now brings us "An American Werewolf in Paris," which is just like the first one except that it isn't funny, isn't particularly frightening and contains questionable (although computer-generated) special effects. The nurse is nowhere to be seen, but they did manage to include a cute naked woman. This one's French, just like the title.

Oh, to be 18 again. I saw that original film again a couple of years ago and it's not much to talk about, but there are still a few fun elements to it.

The problem with "An American Werewolf in Paris," though, is that it's absolutely nothing to talk about. Zero. Zip. It just happens, then you go home.

Looking for love?

Tom Everett Scott, who was so agreeable as Tom Hanks' alter ego in "That Thing You Do," stars as Andy, an American college student who's traveling through Europe with his two highly unlikable friends. They're trying to garner what they call "sex points" by sleeping with as many women as possible. Andy isn't participating, though, because he's deeper than that. He's lookin' for love, gosh darn it, not just sex.

I hope you memorized that, because it constitutes the entire character. You don't think he's going to turn into a werewolf, do you? Well, yeah, but not so fast, smarty-pants.

American Werewolf in Paris
	3.2MB/47 sec./240x180 1.7MB/47 sec./160x120 QuickTime movie
1 min. 45 sec VXtreme streaming video

First he has to stumble upon the pretty, sometimes naked young woman. That would be Julie Delpy, who I usually enjoy to some degree, but, in this case, seems to be delivering a classic "take the money and run" performance. In most movies it's a requisite that the romantic leads "meet cute." "An American Werewolf in Paris" has moved a step beyond this formula by having Scott and Delpy "meet bad."

Get a load of this. Scott, in an attempt to impress his simpleton friends, prepares to take a bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower after it's shut down for the night. That's what I said. After strapping the cord to his legs, he spots Delpy standing on the Tower's railing, preparing to dive to her death -- not a bad idea when you consider she's a werewolf ... or when you consider the script, for that matter.

Delpy leaps just as Scott reaches for her, so he goes over, too. He catches her by the ankles in mid-freefall and drops her lightly to the ground just as his bungee cord snaps him back into the air, where he hits his head against a steel girder. He winds up in the hospital. I guess this is the Gameboy-rattled '90s version of having them smack their shopping carts into each other at the grocery store.

Scott eventually gets bitten after tracking Delpy down, and winds up morphing into a wolf-thingy whenever the movie starts to drag, which, realistically speaking, should have been about every three minutes.

Sprouting fangs

There's some supposedly frightening foolishness about werewolves in Paris (aside from the tower sequence, the movie could just as easily have been set in Minneapolis) being hipsters who've come up with a drug that allows them to sprout fangs whenever they want, instead of having to wait for a full moon.

They also dance to au courant music, although I don't know why anyone should care. I never wondered if Lon Chaney Jr. was getting down to Glenn Miller during his off hours.

I don't have to tell you that things eventually get incredibly messy, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't have to tell you anything at all about this movie.

I knew I wasn't the only one losing interest when the guy in front of me at the theater proceeded to have a lengthy conversation on his cell phone while the story played itself out. Only in New York would the person on the other end not wonder what all the screaming was about. I would suggest, however, that if you're an 18-year-old chowder-head, you might want to go see it so you can look back in 2015 and wonder what the hell you were thinking.

"An American Werewolf in Paris" contains blood, French nudity, dismemberment and that song by Smash Mouth that was actually good the first 673 times you heard it. Rated R. 100 minutes.

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