An American Werewolf in Paris Movie Review

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

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Written by: John Landis (characters in An American Werewolf in London), Tim Burns & Tom Stern and Anthony Waller
Directed by: Anthony Waller
Starring: Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy, Vince Vieluf, Julie Bowen
Rated: R
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Plot
An American man unwittingly gets involved with French werewolves who have developed a serum allowing them to transform at will.

Verdict
You'll quickly discern in the first couple of scenes this movie is bad. It won't get better. Everything about this movie is frustrating, including writing, acting, and directing. Few bad movies become so silly and ridiculous so quickly. Most of them at least have an aspiration to be good. This is a complete waste of time.
Skip it.

Review
This unfortunately captures some aspects of the time period from the focus on extreme sports to the grunge fashion and music. I've seen this movie and the original before, but I don't remember them all that well, other than the transformation scene from the original. I don't know how well this captures the spirit of the original, but I don't think the original was this silly. Horror movies usually aren't this comedic.

The first scene borders on parody. It's a scene made for short attention spans and it's hiding the monster like it's not stated in the title. It's a throwaway scene just to let us know monsters are lurking. This movie is trading on name recognition, though it is loosely following the story of the original movie. It's just that the choices made are so unfortunate. I'm unsure when jokes are intentional or unintentional. There's bungee jumping, and this is certainly in the running for dumbest bungee jumping scene of all time. The bandaging on Andy's (Tom Everett Scott) face as a result of the jump seems like it was done by a child. I have to wonder if this wasn't intended to be a comedy, but labeling it as such is a way to save face.

Julie Delpy, Tom Everett Scott play Serafine, Andy

The acting is beyond rough, and so much of this movie is stupid. This movie doesn't care about logic when getting from scene to scene. The way that Andy finds Serafine (Julie Delpy) defies any reason, but he has to find her so the rest of the movie has a plot. This is a bad parody of werewolf movies. No one acts like a real human, and because of that this movie is frequently stupid. This manages to create a flimsy villain which provides a mission for the protagonists. None of it really matters as this movie just isn't good.

If you couldn't guess by the title Andy becomes a werewolf and we're all but told Serafine did it. This is reiterated later. The movie rewrites this in the last few minutes just to put a bow on the ending. Even completely defying the logic the movie has set up, there are still a few questions that go unanswered.

Just as this began with bungee jumping, so too does it end with bungee jumping. Like most of the scenes in the movie this lacks any logic. This movie doesn't make sense, and it's not supposed to.