When my friend and I decided to give Teen Wolf a chance, we expected a campy 80’s comedy about accepting yourself mixed in with werewolf hijinks. I had my expectations relatively low as I know this movie is what inspired that awful Jeff Davis show of the same name. Let this movie was even worse than my low expectations. Teen Wolf is unresolved issues, mixed messaging, and musical montages with barely any wolfing out!
Starring Michael J. Fox, Teen Wolf is about Scott Howard aka the Teen Wolf. He seemingly starts to transform out of nowhere when it is revealed that he actually inherited this ability to transform from his father, who comes from a long line of werewolves. Scott is horrified at first, but his father reassures him, saying that even though the wolf is a part of him he’s still Scott. So, okay, the movie is setting up that even though Scott is a werewolf, he will learn how to balance both parts and find his true identity.
Except he doesn’t — he fully wolfs out on the basketball court and suddenly becomes a star athlete everyone loves. Until they don’t and accuse him of showboating — but then these same kids cheer him on showboating at the school dance before they all break out into a choreographed wolf dance. New conflict: Scott becomes the most popular guy in school, which leads him to eventually abandon his friends. Okay, so the movie is about how the werewolf is bad and Scott needs to be himself to win his friends, despite his dad saying it was a part of him he needed to embrace.
The motive changes ONCE again when his dad says Scott needs to get control of the wolf. When he was younger, the father reveals the worst night of his life was when he used his wolf powers to threaten another man. (He does this again to the same man later, and then says ‘Yeah, I still got it’ despite him saying it was the worst night of his life, so….)
So is the wolf bad or not? He literally tells Scott at the beginning it doesn’t have to be all bad, but now he’s acting like the wolf is dangerous. So now I’m thinking will Scott become more wolf than man? Is this a horror movie now?
It doesn’t matter anyway. Scott abandons the wolf persona entirely and the last fifteen minutes of the movie are a musical montage of them winning the basketball game despite sucking before he was the wolf. Now they’re just good because plot demands it and Scott said he believed in them.
And that’s it. The wolf is gone for the last twenty minutes of the movie, and the only conflict is Scott feeling bad people like the wolf more than him. The characters aren’t great, with Stiles Stilinski being a standout and even he’s not likeable with that good ol’ 1980s homophobia. The Coach is also really funny, but not in it nearly enough. Michael J. Fox is charming as ever, but poor writing and poor directing really don’t allow audiences to get immersed into the story — mostly because there isn’t a story. It’s a kid who can turn into a wolf — which is fine, but they set up so many plots and ideas and don’t follow through on any of them. Which would be fine, a movie doesn’t need a lesson, but they just keep setting up morals! They can’t help themselves. There is also a conflict where Scott’s friend Louis starts avoiding him — but the movie never addresses why, and then they never make up. They just bring it up to not do anything and that’s the whole movie. It’s musical montages of characters doing things, mostly playing basketball, and then a few lines of dialogue before the next montage.
I was stunned by how 80’s, but also how bad, Teen Wolf was. There felt like very little wolf despite Michael J. Fox being in the wolf make up for a good forty five minutes — twenty of which I swear were just him playing basketball. This movie is so much basketball, I literally lost my mind watching it. I even dozed off after a certain point, only to wake up to them STILL PLAYING BASKETBALL.
Don’t waste your time — this isn’t even campy or cute bad. It’s just bad.