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Written by Mandroid3000
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TEEN WOLF ** out of *****
Genres
1985
Directed by
Rod Daniel
Written by
Joseph Loeb III
Matthew Weisman
Cast
Michael J. Fox .... Scott Howard
James Hampton .... Harold Howard
Susan Ursitti .... Lisa 'Boof' Marconi
Jerry Levine .... Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski
Matt Adler .... Lewis
Lorie Griffin .... Pamela Wells
Jim MacKrell .... Vice Principal Rusty Thorne
Mark Arnold .... Mick McAllister
Jay Tarses .... Coach Bobby Finstock
If you want to see a movie that has no idea where to go after about twenty minutes, Teen Wolf is for you. It sets up a pretty lame premise then goes in circles and falls down dead. If it wasn’t for the presence of the then-extremely popular Michael J. Fox most people wouldn’t remember this sitcom-level comedy. It's one trip down memory lane that's not worth taking.
Michael J. Fox’s character Scott Howard is no Marty McFly or Alex P. Keaton. Scott is a damn whiny teen. First he whines about whether to play basketball, then he whines about the girl who won’t go out with him. After this he whines about being too normal, then when he gets to be a werewolf he whines about the fact that everyone wants him to be the wolf and not Scott. If he wasn’t played by Michael J. Fox I would’ve wanted to cut his head open with a hatchet.
Teen Wolf seems to go out of its way to be a generic teen movie that doesn’t allow the presence of a werewolf to thwart its determined banality. In the end it boils down to whether Scott should succeed as the wolf or as himself. This comes to a head at the big basketball final. The problem I have is that he’s clearly the best player on the team. So when he decides not to be the wolf anymore I don’t really know what the message is. Embrace averageness? And since he’s a hereditary werewolf is this a movie about spurning your cultural roots? Or perhaps it’s a veiled attack on crony capitalism. Or perhaps it’s a just a really weak movie.
The general rule of thumb for a horror film is that something’s scarier the less you see it. Teen Wolf proves that in a comedy something’s funnier the less you see it. After seemingly endless basketball matches where the wolf dribbles behind his back, dunks, blocks shots, and doesn’t pass to his team mates, the other members of the team get as sick of it as the viewer. A scene of The Wolf standing on top of a van as it cruises through town playing Surfin’ Safari is more sad than anything. And by the time of the school dance, we’ve seen enough.
The only good reason to dig this one out of the bargain bin is Jay Tarses as Coach Bobby Finstock. It seems hard to believe that his dialogue was written by the people who wrote the rest of the movie. He offers the most useless advice to Michael J. Fox’s “Never play cards with a guy whose first name is the same as a city” and his the most coaching he does is to ask a bench player to get him some salt for his hot dog. He’s the star of the movie.
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