Blood and ChocolateYou'll howl January 31,
2007 11:42:49 AM
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE: A preposterous sleight of hand
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Shape shifters or werewolves have always required crafty cinematic sleight of hand. The Wolf Man and An American Werewolf in London were wonders in their times, but in a CGI-FX-fueled universe — with Underworld as the standard — this giddy confection is an adolescent girl parading around in her mother’s make-up. To become the beast is something of an Olympic event, where a lycanthrope will leap through the air, effortlessly twisting and contorting like a high diver, till she achieves an æthereal glow, and when she touches down, she’s a wolf. Silly, yes, but so is much of Katja von Garnier’s film (based on Annette Curtis Klause’s book), in which a nubile young lycan (Agnes Bruckner) falls for an American expatriate (Hugh Dancy) in Bucharest. Bruckner’s Vivian conveys the pull of allegiance between love and “the pack” with a dour scowl. Then there’s von Garnier’s overdose of blurry B-quality slo-mo. The result is preposterous and so inadvertently cheesy, it’ll make you howl.
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