American Werewolf in Paris

OK, so I don't know why they decided to make another movie about a Yankee college student going to a European capital and becoming a lycanthrope. But still, "An American Werewolf in Paris" definitely has its moments. Some scenes were no doubt thrown in for comic relief, like "You can't just pop up and tell me what to do." I agree with a previous reviewer that people who slam this movie are comparing it too much to "An American Werewolf in London". Maybe there's a slight feeling of that one, but you have to take this one as something new - and rather campy - to really enjoy it. Tom Everett Scott and Julie Delpy do a pretty cool job. But either way, I think that I've had my fill of movies about US citizens becoming lycanthropes in the Old Continent.

So what do YOU plan to do the next time that there's a full moon?

When a trio of American teens travel to Paris for a daredevil challenge they decide to bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower. During the jump Andy manages to save the life of a girl attempting suicide. However when he later tries to find her again he finds that she has something to hide. When he and his friends attend a party held by friends for hers they find they are trapped by werewolves. Andy gets bitten and becomes part of a world he wants no part of.

This is a belated sequel to the 1980's classic `American Werewolf in London' and indeed it tries very hard to be just like it - the corpse black humour, the dreams within dreams sequences etc. However the story is different as it introduces a wider werewolf conspiracy idea to the plot. It actually works quite well - it's not better than many other creature features but it works OK.

The main problem with it is that it is very much another teen horror movie - with a stupid rock soundtrack, valley girl style humour and dumb spectacle. It lacks the original's black humour and it isn't anywhere near as tense as `London'. The special effects are totally CGI and they don't work as well as `London's' - it all looks too computerised, and seeing everything takes the scare factor out of it.

In fairness when you look at it as a stand-alone film it's not so bad even though it doesn't stand out from other teenage horror movies. But a sequel to `London'? - sorry but it's not a great addition to that piece of work. Tom Everett Scott looks like he's stepped out of American Pie into a horror movie! He's OK but he doesn't compare with Dunne all those years ago. Julie Delphy is actually quite good - she doesn't have much of a character but she carries herself well. The other characters are either rough French skinheads or American teens.

Overall it's entertaining enough - but it pales terribly when compared to the original.

If you want a great plot, terrific special effects, good humor and characters you can really care about, rent An American Werewolf in LONDON. Stay away from this tripe.

For one thing, the supposedly high-tech special effects are terribly disappointing. Hard to believe that even though the original movie was made 14 years before this one, its SFX are actually more realistic, mostly because the transformation scenes in this movie often happen either off-camera or while the character is running behind something.

Also, the humor in the movie falls short. Granted, the "chewing gum" skit was pretty funny, but as I walked out of the theatre I was pretty ashamed of myself for laughing at such an immature joke. The Eiffel Tower scene is funny only because of its felonious breaking of the laws of physics (Uh, since the Tower spreads outward, wouldn't these bungee jumpers wind up slamming into it at some point during their fall?)

And finally, the plot is simply insulting. Even though the original movie had little more behind its story than "I'm a werewolf, oh no" that is even better than this stereotypical drivel about an anti-American punk who wants to "purify" the world from the country. If that's not bad enough, their method (luring Gen-X tourists into a club to meet their grisly deaths) is awful inefficient. And to top it off, there are numerous mentions and depictions of eating/drinking someone's heart (including a scene in which Julie Delpy sticks a human heart in a blender - yummy), none of which are suitable for anyone with a stomach.

As stated in the beginning, if you really want to see a good werewolf movie, the original 1983 film will suit you just fine. But if you rent this one, be warned: the producers and writers spent more time getting Bush to sing the theme song than they did writing the plot.

I first saw this in the early 2k on a dvd which I own.

Revisited it recently.

This second installment is about Sérafine (Julie Delpy), daughter of David Kessler and Alex Price from the first part, staying in Paris with her stepfather who is on the verge of developing a cure for stopping the transformation of Sérafine. The cure has the opposite effect as it forces werewolves to immediately transform into their beast form which made Sérafine kill her mother n injure her stepfather.

I liked the movie when i first saw but aft revisiting it, i didn't enjoy it.

The effects are too cartoonish n the werewolves look more like demons with bad cgi.

Most of the creature mayhem scenes are shot in flickering lights n there ain't any good transformation scene or gory moment.

Nonetheless the beautiful Julie Delpy's nudity will calm all viewers.

The dvd which i own has the ending of Andy visiting Serafine at a hospital, where she has given birth to a child, whose eyes shift to look like the werewolves.

The version i saw recently has another ending where the couple are shown getting married on The Statue of Liberty n they both jump for an adrenaline rush cos the cure is adrenaline, which stops the transformation.

5.5 out of 10

Werewolf movies are usually alarmingly bad, even though they should, in theory, make for more interesting villains than vampires, zombies, and slashers. But An American Werewolf in Paris is an exception, sort of. Tom Everett Scott stars as a daredevil who tours Europe with his buddies, performing outrageous stunts. During one particular escapade, he saves the life of a young woman (Julie Delpy) who tries to commite suicide. Thinking she's the girl of his dreams, little does he know what he's getting into.

Paris tries to be a mixture of different genres: it wants to work as a horror film (to a mild extent), an action/adventure, and as a comedy. Dog Soldiers was definitely far superior at these aspects, but AAWIP's campy approach makes it a decent timewaster. There's not a single boring moment, though a lot of the material is admittedly very silly. Thankfully, none of it's taken very seriously, and some of the humor is actually very funny. Scott and Delpy (who's probably the third most beautiful French actress I've ever seen, behind only Mathilda May and Sophie Marceau) have good chemistry together, even if Scott's performance is a little on and off. The werewolf effects are obviously CGI, but more "serious" effects work would have ruined the campy mood.