Le loup-garou de Paris

I don't know why I get my hopes up for sequels... my hopes are always destroyed.

This movie is no exception. For starters, it's important to note that An American Werewolf in London (AAWiL) will always have a special place in my heart as one of the first horror movies I remembers seeing on HBO as a kid.

This movie lacked just about everything that AAWiL had: good acting, good special effects, a decent soundtrack, etc.

Tom Everett Scott is a terrible actor... the kind of actor I see and wonder how he ever gets casted for anything. Julie Delpy is OK and I dig her accent. Everyone else was pretty much fluff and/or fodder. The effects were God awful. It's hard enough to pull off CGI monsters and hairy ones are even harder to make believable. When you are making a sequel for a movie that had effects that are still impressive by today's standards, some serious effort has to be made if the intent is to make a movie that rivals the original. This one isn't even in the same league as AAWiL. The music for AAWiL was also very well done. AAWiP had... Bush? Yeah, that's the route you want to go to create a timeless classic.

Unlike other reviews I wouldn't even go so far as to say this movie would have good as a stand-alone (no connection to AAWiL), but I wouldn't even give it that much credit.

It just sucked.

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.

"An American Werewolf in Paris" is an excellent horror-comedy, in the great tradition of "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night". I see that a lot of people dislike this movie. These are obviously hardcore horror fans who wanted to see something dark and gothic; but instead got something blackly humorous and were not amused by it. I admit, "An American Werewolf in Paris" is not really scary, but neither are "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night," and those two movies seem to be highly regarded by horror fans. I don't understand why everyone hates this one so much. If you are a fan of horror-comedies, or if you have a morbid sense of humor, this is definitely for you. I think it's great: nine out of ten stars (On a one star DVD, I should say. It would have been nice to have some extra features besides the trailer.)

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.

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.