severin72

Often dismissed (probably fairly) as an attempt to transplant "The Big Chill" into the English countryside, "Peter's Friends" is even more striking now for showing some familiar faces looking way younger than we now see them and for deploying co-writer Rita Rudner so far outside her familiar, Emo Phillips-in-drag persona. Peter (Stephen Fry) hosts a new year's reunion of college friends and their partners at the English country house (read: mansion) he has just inherited from his father. Nostalgia, crises and comedy ensue. It's as well acted as one would expect from the ensemble cast (oddly, Brannagh, the most distinguished actor among them is most the uneven, possibly distracted by directing duties) but the writing is inconsistent. The pace is too pressured with no time for reflection between constant emotional highs and lows. It's all a bit too frantic and formulaic. Despite all that the film is compelling. The characters are sufficiently well-rounded and likable to keep the viewer interested and Brannagh manages to make England in the dead of Winter look more lovely than bone-chilling. If you're the same age as the cast or up to about ten years younger it's intriguing. Outside of that demographic it's more likely to come across as puzzling or dull.

Given how long this thing spent in post-production, enduring multiple re-shoots it's a great deal better than one would expect. It looks beautiful (as long as it stays out of a tediously CG London) with suitably bleak, and Gothic location work. The performances are solid all around with Anthony Hopkins, who could do (and occasionally has done) this sort of thing in his sleep, stealing the show.

The downfall is the amount of time spent slyly referencing other werewolf movies and otherwise planting its tongue deep in its cheek.

The werewolf rips someone out through the side of a tent - Bad Moon.

The rampage through London (right down to a bus crash) - American Werewolf in London.

The dream sequences - see above.

The dismembered arm firing a gun - Wolfen.

Someone falls from a high window and is impaled on railings - Howling 2.

It goes on.

The last one is an example of how gratuitous the violence is. Once someone has been thrown out a window, the railings are a predictable bit of overdoing it. The whole film, in fact, suffers from being predictable which helps explain the lack of genuine scares, let alone suspense. This isn't just because the tale is familiar. Most viewers will be able to call each scene and even each shot ahead of time.

Back to the violence. The body count is astronomical and the extremely graphic nature of the assorted disembowelings, dismemberings, decapitations and so forth ultimately combine to produce a sense of silliness.

The werewolf itself (or themselves to be precise) is a lovely piece of work that proves that the legendary Rick Baker (who has about the briefest cameo imaginable) is able to co-exist with CGI just fine. The desire to make it look reminiscent of the original Wolfman is understandable and the fact that it doesn't look particularly canine doesn't detract. The real problem is that it doesn't move or behave in a remotely wolf-like manner. The primate-like movements are so pronounced as to be distracting and to make one wonder what director Joe Johnston was thinking.

Having said all of that, it's a decent evening's entertainment if not, perhaps, a justifiable use of a hundred and fifty million dollars.

On the minus side of the ledger Big Bad Wolf is crass, crude, formulaic, exploitative, cheap and ultimately tedious. On the plus side, other than perhaps the tedious bit, that's exactly what it sets out to be. That, and a couple of middling-to-good performances. I would write a summary of the plot but once I reached the "teenagers go up to cabin" part I'd lose the will to continue. Points of note: the werewolf talks (chiefly so that it can spout a dreary series of corny one- liners whilst engaged in acts of rape and murder) and David Naughton was talked in to a cameo. The latter brings us to the fact that the producers had the sheer gall to claim during production that their film would have better effects than American Werewolf in London. When you see their actual results you'll at least have to award points for shamelessness. Ultimately this is typical, contemporary, straight-to-DVD, B movie horror. It's not awful. It just aims cynically low and then walks away.