Thoughts on Teen Wolf

 

via IMDB

"This is a full dress rehearsal. We need to see the wolf. So wolf out, uh, wolf up, wolf it, whatever you do, uh, pronto amigo."

"Uh, Mr. Lolley, uh, I've been doing some thinking and I decided I'd rather play the part as me. Well, play it, play it as myself."

"That ... that wouldn't be theatre, would it? See, no one wants to see you."

My biggest laugh during Teen Wolf came from this exchange. It may have scored a sequel, cartoon spinoff and gritty-sexy reboot, but I maintain that the main reason we're still talking about the movie or its franchise -- let alone that the movie even got a wide theatrical release -- has to do with its star, Michael J. Fox. He does an admirable job carrying something that's merely okay.

Scott Howard (Fox) is a mediocre basketball player with little to no chance of impressing high school beauty Pamela (Lorie Griffin). Nevertheless, he has a loving father, Harold (James Hampton), plus friends like knew-her-since-she-was-a-kid "Boof" (Susan Ursitti) and the quick with his wits Stiles (Jerry Levine). Scott also has inherited Harold's ability to become a werewolf, something which is apparently caused by getting worked up. The visual of the transformed father and son is fun, but I wish it was set up better. That said, R. Christopher Biggs' special makeup effects were better than I expected.

Directed by Rod Daniel from a screenplay by Jeph Loeb & Matthew Weisman, Teen Wolf is pleasant if unambitious. It suffers in comparison with the summer of 1985's more inventive genre movies, like Back to the Future, Fright Night or Weird Science. In Scott's world, the biggest problems involve keeping bullies like Mick (Mark Arnold) and Vice Principal Thorne (Jim MacKrell) in check. There's enough life lessons to fuel a couple episodes of Family Ties, including the realizations that Boof, not Pamela, is the right girl as well as how to be a team player and the importance of appreciating yourself.

"Look, Scott, being ... what we are is not without its problems, but it's not all bad, either."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, for one thing, you're gonna be able to do a lot of things the other guys can't."

"Oh, like chase cars and bite the mailman?"

"When you want it, you're gonna have great power. And with great power goes a greater responsibility. Your mom and I learned to live with it this thing and so can you."

"And what if I can't? I can look forward to a life of stealing babies in the middle of the night? And, uh, killing chickens? Fearing full moons, dodging silver bullets? Well, thank you, dad, but no thanks."

"Don't believe all that stuff you see in the moves. With certain obvious exceptions, werewolves are people just like anyone else. What I'm trying to say is the werewolf is a part of you, but that doesn't change what you have inside."

"Look, I've got a bad outside hook shot. I'm allergic to eggs. I've got a $6 haircut. I mean, I have problems. I don't need this one. ... I gotta get to school."

" ... That went well."

After Scott's confidence issues, the worst thing to happen in Teen Wolf is that he has meaningless sex with Pamela. Since she's not at all fazed about getting it on with a supernatural creature, we're evidently supposed to shrug it off. Still, I feel like the hookup, Lewis (Matt Adler) becoming afraid of Scott, and Mick baiting Scott with anti-wolf sentiment all hint at a different, more serious direction the movie ultimately avoided. Besides Lewis, the people negatively affected by the situation are Mick, who gets his shirt ripped open at the big dance, and Thorne, who wets his pants after a confrontation with Harold.

If it wasn't clear that everyone knew about Scott's ability to become a werewolf, you'd swear it was just an internal thing. His classmates (minus Lewis), teammates like Chubby (Mark Holton), self-serving adults like Coach Finstock (Jay Tarses) and school play director Kirk (Scott Paulin) ... they're all pretty casual about the experience. It makes you wonder if any of them would even remember it. "Oh, yeah, Scott ... he wore a mask for a couple games, didn't he? ... No, he had that hormone problem, I think."

Most Thoughts On entries have an ending that ties everything together. Alas, I don't have much more to say about Teen Wolf. Our hero got everything he dreamed of in the end, the dream girl told her beau to drop dead and it looked like someone flashed (no, not really, at least according to the A.V. Club). As for me, I turned my mind off and was neither pleased nor disappointed.

"It doesn't matter how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose. And even that doesn't make all that much difference."

Recommended with reservations.

Thoughts:

-- "What are you looking at dicknose?" The missing comma offends me more than the sentiment ever could.

-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $33.1 million on a $1.2 million budget, this opened and peaked at No. 2 (kept out of the top spot by Back to the Future), coming in at No. 26 for 1985.

-- Critic's Corner: "Aggressively boring," Vincent Canby declared. "Bland and inane," agreed Duane Bygre, The Hollywood Reporter. "Innocuous and well-intentioned, but terribly feeble," Variety wrote. People: "Well-intentioned, harmless fun."

-- Fanservice Junction: Griffin's underwear scene clinches this ("We're just one big happy family in the theatre."), but let's also note Arnold's body and how incredibly twinkish Fox was back then.

-- Today in Gay Panic: I give Stiles saying he didn't think he could handle Scott "being a f*g," before commenting on how beautiful he looks as a werewolf (and before that, joking about Scott and Boof "coming out of the closet"), a 5 out of 10.

-- After Teen Wolf came 1987's Teen Wolf Too with Jason Bateman. It could have become a biannual thing, having a Teen Wolf movie with a young male NBC star. 1989: Billy Warlock. 1991: Will Smith. 1993: Mark-Paul Gosselaar. 1995: Joey Lawrence.

-- I was a big fan of the gritty-sexy reboot that aired on MTV during the 2010s. I'm now wondering if Michael J. Fox and Tyler Posey have ever met.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Doug Savant and Gregory Itzin.

-- Hey, It's the mid-'80s!: That is my kind of school, when a werewolf can breakdance in the hall. Fox's dance double was Thom Adcock. The choreography was by Janet Roston.

-- Memorable Music: The score is 37-29, still favoring songs written for movies. I didn't like any of Miles Goodman and Douglas Brayfield's songs, although "Big Bad Wolf" during the dance sequence comes close. No, my point goes to "Surfin' U.S.A.," which plays when Stiles and later, Scott "surf" atop the van in motion. Kids, don't try this at home! 

-- "There are three rules that I live by: never get less than 12 hours sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city and never get involved with a woman who has a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

-- Next: Better Off Dead. On deck: Compromising Positions and Crossover Dreams. Coming Soon: Creator and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Further down the line: Silver Bullet.