Producer: Jason Blum   Director: Leigh Whannell   Screenplay: Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck   Cast: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Zac Chandler and Milo Cawthorne   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C-

Plenty of horror movies have skimpy plots, but Leigh Whannell’s take on the werewolf genre might have been written on the back of a standard-issue postage stamp.  Though “Wolf Man” tries to infuse the threadbare narrative with grace notes about generational rage and domestic discord, essentially it’s just a stripped-down version of the old story of a guy afflicted with an animalistic curse who must sacrifice himself for those he loves.  Unlike the 1941 original, it lacks a truly haunting, tragic vibe (as well as coherent if outlandish expository accoutrements to the macabre occurrences), and unlike Whannell’s clever 2020 reimagining of “The Invisible Man,” it fails to infuse the formula with issues conveying a particularly contemporary bite.

A prologue, set in a desolate region of Oregon forest back in the nineties, introduces young Blake Lovell (Zac Chandler) living with his father Grady (Sam Jaeger) on an isolated farm.  Grady is a stern, indeed fearsome father, harshly impressing on the boy a need to obey his injunctions absolutely when they’re out hunting deer.  One night Blake hears Grady talking over the shortwave about a terrifying encounter the two have had with a ravenous creature that, in his belief, is the animal the local indigenous people refer to as “the face of the wolf.”  Why Grady, a fiercely protective father, should be keeping his son in such a dangerous environment is never made clear, though there’s at least a suggestion he might be hunting the beast. 

Thirty years later Blake (Christopher Abbott), a stay-at-home dad who describes himself as a writer “between jobs,” is living in San Francisco with his successful journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), of whom he’s also extremely protective, sometimes apologizing to her for coming across so strong.  Obviously he’s concerned with having inherited the toxic parenting tendencies of Grady, whose place he left as soon as he could and from whom he was estranged ever since.

Because of his insecurity as a husband and father, the marriage is in trouble, so that when news arrives that Grady, who’d disappeared in the forest sometime earlier, has finally been declared legally dead, he suggests that to reset things, the family should go to Grady’s farm for the summer to see to closing it down.  Charlotte reluctantly agrees, which explains why the three are soon shown driving a moving truck deep into the Oregon forest.  Unwisely, they find themselves in the middle of nowhere at night, and Blake isn’t quite certain where the cutoff to the farm is. 

They’re helped by a local, Derek (Benedict Hardie), who remembers Blake from their childhood.  Ginger spies him in a watch tower off the road, and he approaches them with a rifle and jumps into the truck to guide them.  He has a slightly sinister vibe, but nothing much is really made of it before Blake runs the truck off the road to avoid a figure, half man and half beast, blocking the way.  Derek is thrust from the vehicle and carted away by the creature; the Lovells escape the crash and run frantically to the relative safety of Grady’s place, but Blake is scratched or bitten in the pursuit.

The rest of the movie is basically a trapped-in-the-house tale, albeit one in which the invader is some terrifying beast and the familial protector begins turning into a beast himself.  Whannell’s intent is to fashion a crushingly tense standoff in which Charlotte must try to tend to her husband, whose condition is rapidly deteriorating, protect their daughter, and try to reach out for help—something that’s made impossible because, of course, the smartphones don’t have service in such a remote locale.  (Is there any more boring a screenwriting crutch nowadays?  Perhaps the one in which the police do in fact arrive, but are quickly killed.)

In any event, despite a few inventive moments like the way Blake’s development of hypersensitive hearing is disclosed—an example of the nifty sound design by P.K. Hooker and Will Files—the makers’ touch is off here.  In Ruby Mathers’ production design the interior of the house is nondescript, and the action scenes staged within it by Whannell, cinematographer Stefan Duscio and editor Andy Canny are cluttered and messy, making for a claustrophobic feel more murkily oppressive than genuinely scary.  Even worse are those outside, like a supposedly suspenseful sequence atop a greenhouse tent that might have seemed a winner on paper but is flatly executed.  (It does, however, allow for the inclusion of young Firth, who often mysteriously disappears when the action gets too nasty in the house.)  Nor does the shrill rants of Benjamin Wallfisch’s score add much to the goings-on. The repeated use of a camera trick to suggest how things see from Blake’s animal perspective—“werewolf vision,” so to speak—is not a good idea, with the shots, blue-tinted but with shafts of glistening colors and brightly blazing eyes, frankly looking more cheesy than bizarre.

The best thing about “Wolf Man” is easily the soulful performance by Abbott, who manages to retain a human spark even as his transformation progresses, just as Lon Chaney Jr., in what is arguably his best work, did in the original.  But though one appreciates Whannell’s decision to go with old-fashioned prosthetics and makeup effects rather than the crushing weight of CGI so commonplace today, it’s undeniable that the ones devised by Arjen Tuiten aren’t very impressive; they make the latter-stage Blake look more like a wizened old man with stringy hair and bad teeth than a werewolf. (In fact, Jack Pierce’s then state-of-the-art effects for the 1941 film are far more chilling and more memorable.)  Still, Abbott is close to being the entire show, since Garner is reduced to doing little more than stand around looking distraught, apart from the few instances when she gets to swing a knife or crowbar to defend her husband, and Firth is only adequate as the kid in jeopardy.      

“Wolf Man” is preferable to Universal’s last attempt to resurrect this old franchise, 2010’s ghastly “The Wolfman.”  And its stark simplicity comes as a relief after the company’s inauguration of its abortive Dark Universe, the overstuffed, undercooked 2017 Tom Cruise vehicle “The Mummy.”  But it’s a slight, distinctly unfrightening addition to the werewolf mythology—in many ways inferior to the recent, not dissimilar Kip Harington effort, “The Beast Within.”  Even by low Blumhouse standards, this is pretty much a dud.

Producers: Marc Platt and David Stone   Director: Jon M. Chu   Screenplay: Winnie Holzman   Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Keala Settle and Peter Dinklage   Distributor: Universal

Grade: C-

It may be hard to believe, but when it opened on Broadway two decades ago, “Wicked” was slammed by the New York critics and seemed destined for flopdom.  For reasons which should probably be left to analysts of the vagaries of modern American culture, however, audiences embraced it, and it became a huge smash.  It’s still packing them in, and has spawned numerous touring companies and international productions. 

Unsurprisingly, assessments of the show have evolved to align with its longevity.  One will now encounter claims that it’s as much a classic as L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and Victor Fleming’s 1939 movie based on it.      

But what this film adaptation of the show (or rather of the first act, since a continuation, consisting of the second act, is scheduled for release next year) makes clear is that the opening-night critics were right back in 2003.  “Wicked” is a lumbering, cluttered, preachy prequel to Baum’s book and Fleming’s movie, and Jon Chu’s version of it is as visually unattractive as it is narratively and musically clunky.   

Based on a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, which was only a modest success until the musical became a phenomenon (the author has since made a cottage industry of further installments), the story focuses on the up-and-down relationship between Elphaba Thropp, who will become the Wicked Witch of the West, and Galinda Upland, who will become Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. It’s structured as an extended flashback following a depressing opening number in which the Munchkins celebrate news of the Wicked Witch’s demise and call on Glinda to reminisce about their friendship as college classmates.

Elphaba (played as a youngster by Karis Musongole and as a grown-up by Cynthia Erivo) was born with green skin, the supposed daughter of Frexspar (Andy Nyman), the governor of Munchkinland, but actually the offspring of his wife’s (Courtney-Mae Briggs) affair with a mysterious man.  Why the union should have altered her skin color, or endowed her with telekinetic powers, is never explained, especially since the identity of her biological father is eventually revealed.  But so be it.

When Elphaba assists her younger sister Nessarose (played as a child by Cesily Collette Taylor and later by Marissa Bode), who’s confined to a wheelchair, in her matriculation to Shiz University, her accidental exhibition of her powers attracts the attention of the school’s Sorcery mistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who insists that the girl become her special student.  Morrible also arranges that she room with Galinda (Ariana Grande), a superficial airheaded blonde who dreams of becoming a sorceress too.

Studious Elphaba and popularity maven Galinda, who quickly heads a clique including tiresomely fawning Pfannee (Bowen Yang) and ShenShen (Bronwyn James), dislike one another, but eventually become friends, even after the arrival of devil-may-care Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who catches the eye of both.  When Elphaba’s abilities earn her an invitation to the Emerald City to meet with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), she invites Galinda—who now calls herself Glinda—to join her.  It’s a fateful journey that reveals some dark secrets and strains their friendship en route to a cliffhanger ending to Part I.

Adding to the already overstuffed character list are a few others, including Ethan Slater as Boq, a Munchkin infatuated with Galinda, who instead steers him toward Nessarose, and Keala Settle as Miss Coddle, the Shiz headmistress.  There are also anthropomorphic CGI animals, like a sweet-tempered bear (voiced by Sharon D. Clarke), who’s nanny to young Elphaba and Nessarose, and learned goat Professor Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), the Shiz history teacher and the last of such non-human faculty members targeted for removal as part of a scheme to end animals’ power of speech and reduce them to captivity.

Elphaba’s opposition to that policy is, of course, an aspect of the movie’s overarching condemnation of discrimination, whether on the basis of skin color or of speciesism.  The latter element also has a dimension that is more immediately pressing today than it was twenty years ago, when one character addresses the political impact of the animal policy with a justification of fascism’s use of scapegoating (in this case, quite literally) to maintain order.  Fine sentiments though these might be, they’re so insistently emphasized here as to become tiresomely obvious.

All of which might not matter if Winnie Holzman’s script were better shaped and less cumbersome and her dialogue wittier, or if Stephen Schwartz’s songs were more distinguished.  Yes, some of them have become standards, but more in the sense of adhering to the easy-listening pop template that has become Broadway’s default style than actually being “classic,” and the lyrics are mostly puerile.  Add to that ensemble choreography by Christopher Scott that, with its emphasis on lurching and striking scarecrow-like poses, is busy but exceedingly ugly.

The lack of beauty extends to the overall look of the film which, thanks to Nathan Crowley’s gaudy production design and Paul Tazewell’s showy costumes, captured with luminous over-brilliance by cinematographer Alice Brooks, is pretty much the definition of garish, a quality exacerbated by the effects.  Of course, nothing here is meant to look remotely real, and some of the images are striking—the long shots of the Emerald City, for example, or a shadow show the Wizard plays out for his guests.  But over the course of two-and-a-half very long hours (editor Myron Kerstein can’t disguise the longueurs) the result is more exhausting than magical.

And yet one can’t fault the stars for the film’s flaws.  Both Erivo and Grande are excellent.  The former has the more difficult task, bringing pathos to a character who, until the last reel, is rather recessive.  Grande, on the other hand, has a field day doing perky, self-absorbed shtick.  And both sing exceptionally well, getting out of their big numbers whatever’s there to get.

Elsewhere the pickings are slimmer.  Goldblum brings the quizzical, bemused attitude that’s his trademark to the Wizard, and Dinklage’s delivery is, as usual, distinctive.  But Yeoh has little to play but smugness, and Bailey is handicapped by a character who veers from roguishness to nobility with inexplicable abruptness.  And while Yang is currently a favorite for many, one might note that his shtick is already becoming a mite tired. 

One of the musical numbers in “Wicked” is called “What Is This Feeling?”  It’s a duet between Galinda and Elphaba during their time as hostile roommates; they decide that they have “unadulterated loathing” for each other.  That would be an over-extreme reaction to the movie, but except for die-hard fanatics of the show, a pained shrug seems appropriate.