We open in Paris ... the camera pans over the Gothic arches as atmospheric, haunting choir music plays in the background. A man dressed in a lab coat bursts out of the sewers pursued by someone or something. He calls out to a nearby taxi, but as he flees towards it some kind of beast leaps out from a nearby grate, grabs him, and drags him down into the sewers to meet his gruesome fate. Yum. Nice opening.
The general rule of sequels made this long after the original is that they're just cashing on the success of the others, and they really ain't good. Look at The Godfather III or the Star Wars prequels as the best examples. But is this one going to break the mould? An American jock called Andy McDermott is on a 'daredevil' tour of Europe with three friends. He decides he's going to bungee jump off the Eiffel tower for a stunt, but there he meets a girl named Serafine who is committing suicide, and he rescues her with the help of his bungee cord in a pretty neat sequence. As it turns out, this girl is the product of that steamy little shower scene in the original movie and has inherited some of her fathers traits. The title is probably the smartest thing about this movie. It is of course a reference to the original, but also it references the 1951 Gene Kelly classic "An American in Paris". Smart. If only good titles made good films, they'd be sorted.
As a result of all this stuff I mentioned so far, I do enjoy this movie more than I like to admit. But unfortunately, I think that's pretty much all the original ideas that this movie has. After that we're left with basically a teen comedy, with no real horror scenes, plenty of boredom and no sense of continuity. D'oh! There's not a whole lot of respect for the original either. For example, in the original the victims of th e werewolf remained in limbo until the wolfs bloodline was severed. Here, all they need is for the one werewolf who killed them to die. Hmm.
It's a real shame, because the seeds were all here for a good sequel, aside from that terrible decision to use completely CGI werewolves (what were they thinking???). The cast are all pretty decent ... Tom Everett Scott was actually an okay choice for the lead in my opinion, as he does remind me of David Naughton sometimes. Julie Delpy is always great as the mysterious female character, a lot like Emmanuelle Seigner in The Ninth Gate.
An American Werewolf in Paris does have it's moments, certainly, but it could have been a whole lot better.
The general rule of sequels made this long after the original is that they're just cashing on the success of the others, and they really ain't good. Look at The Godfather III or the Star Wars prequels as the best examples. But is this one going to break the mould? An American jock called Andy McDermott is on a 'daredevil' tour of Europe with three friends. He decides he's going to bungee jump off the Eiffel tower for a stunt, but there he meets a girl named Serafine who is committing suicide, and he rescues her with the help of his bungee cord in a pretty neat sequence. As it turns out, this girl is the product of that steamy little shower scene in the original movie and has inherited some of her fathers traits. The title is probably the smartest thing about this movie. It is of course a reference to the original, but also it references the 1951 Gene Kelly classic "An American in Paris". Smart. If only good titles made good films, they'd be sorted.
As a result of all this stuff I mentioned so far, I do enjoy this movie more than I like to admit. But unfortunately, I think that's pretty much all the original ideas that this movie has. After that we're left with basically a teen comedy, with no real horror scenes, plenty of boredom and no sense of continuity. D'oh! There's not a whole lot of respect for the original either. For example, in the original the victims of th e werewolf remained in limbo until the wolfs bloodline was severed. Here, all they need is for the one werewolf who killed them to die. Hmm.
It's a real shame, because the seeds were all here for a good sequel, aside from that terrible decision to use completely CGI werewolves (what were they thinking???). The cast are all pretty decent ... Tom Everett Scott was actually an okay choice for the lead in my opinion, as he does remind me of David Naughton sometimes. Julie Delpy is always great as the mysterious female character, a lot like Emmanuelle Seigner in The Ninth Gate.
An American Werewolf in Paris does have it's moments, certainly, but it could have been a whole lot better.