Honestly, if I put the scripts for both teenage werewolf movies side-by-side, I think I'd have a hard time deciding which one was worse. The story in this movie is very near a head-scratching mess, and with perhaps even less character arc than the 1950's film.
The film starts with a teen named Scott, who lives in a small town. The school basketball team he plays on is terrible, he thinks of himself as a clumsy dork, and his friends are all trouble-makers and potheads. All except a girl named "Boof," who has loved Scott since they were children. He, of course, doesn't notice Boof's pining and instead has a crush on a popular blond named Pamela. Yes, so far we've hit almost all the major staples of a 1980's teen movie!
Things take a turn for the "wolf" when Scott notices strange hair growing from his body every time he gets nervous. In a hilariously painful scene, he tries to talk to his unhelpful basketball coach about these "changes" (driving home the metaphor about puberty, but also making it into a joke). When Scott hit the peak of his nervousness, he also starts growing long claw-like nails and sharp teeth.
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| "Do I need braces?" |
The wolf make-up looks incredibly silly, which is surely intentional but still distracting. The werewolves look more like half-formed Wookies than wolves. It makes the whole story very "kid friendly" and comedic, especially given that all the "wolves" can talk normally before and after the change.
As the movie continues, Scott tries desperately to keep his werewolf-side in check, but it doesn't take long for the stress of a basketball game to get to him, causing him to "wolf out."
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| "Uh, just a normal growth spurt...?" |
This, however, is where the plot takes a turn for the, "Really?!" and stops being all that cute. You see, the reaction of the school at large is positive and Scott becomes instantly popular. And, to me, this makes no sense. The father, after all, took the time to stress that Scott needed his wolf side to stay hidden, and he told a story about how he once scared a man so badly by "wolfing out" that the man soiled himself. So, why is literally everyone at Scott's high school fine with the idea of Scott being a werewolf? And why would this make Scott popular? And why aren't there reporters everywhere now that the existence of werewolves has been confirmed? It may fit with the male puberty parallel (growing hair and becoming more aggressive often making teen boys more popular) but unlike The Company of Wolves, this isn't really treated like a metaphor so it just feels like bizarre logic.
The odd thing is that clearly I'm not the only one who thinks this is an odd plot point; so did the creators of the spin-off Teen Wolf cartoon show. When this movie became a decent hit, Southern Star and Clubhouse Pictures got the rights to make a show based on the same characters and concepts. There were a few changes however, the main one being that the entire plot of the show is Scott trying to hide his werewolf changes and identity; the only people who know are his family, and his two his best-friends, Stiles and Boof. This naturally builds in tension and just seems to fit more more plots and human nature.
So, yes, you know your movie has a plot issue when a children's cartoon show has to change sections that don't make any sense.
The rest of the plot follows a bit like a Hanna Montana episode: Scott struggles to not let his popularity as "the Wolf" go to his head, Pamela now shows interest in him, but he continues to realize that most people only like him because he is a werewolf. And that is officially one of the weirdest sentences I have ever written.
The movie ends were all 1980's teen movies must: prom. At the end, the natural choice for this vague "arc" would seem to be that Scott would give up being the wolf (since that's what made him popular and distanced him from his friends), gets over Pamela, and gets together with Boof who "likes him for him." The problem with this is that Scott is a werewolf and there's no going back from that, regardless of whether Boof is his "real" friend who cares about him as only Scott. Because Scott doesn't have much of a personal choice to make, the film has no real way to end this attempt at a conflict. Instead, they just have an incredibly cheesy 80's dance, Scott and Boof sort of get together with no real comment about the "Wolf" identity versus Scott's, and then the movie ends.
This film really is just a bizarre mess. As a whole, the movie makes about as much thematic sense as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and even its puberty parallel doesn't really hold up well by the movie's end.
Ultimately, though, this film is strangely cute. And, as a whole, I found it far more enjoyable than I Was a Teenage Werewolf for one undeniable reason: Michael J. Fox.
I challenge you to find a more likable actor on the face of this earth than Michael J. Fox. He played the role of Scott with such wide-eyed earnestness that I found myself caring about parts of this nonsensical plot for no good reason whatsoever. When it came to the box-office, it didn't hurt that Back to the Future had come out only months before and Fox was a huge hit. Posters for Teen Wolf even included the ridiculously pandering line: "Michael J. Fox is back from the future in a new comedy!"
Is Teen Wolf any good? No, not really. However, if you grew up on either this movie or ones from the same era, there is a lot of eighties nostalgia and, although there's nothing overly good to howl about, Michael J. Fox manages to save some of the more ridiculous aspects through the amazing power of his personality alone.
Rating: 2 out of 5 bites
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