Ah 1997, the year I graduated from high school, I also turned 20, Hale Bop comet comes and goes, Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died. the Titanic sailed into theaters, and the Prius became a reality. A good year over all but one dubious thing hangs over the heads of werewolf fans for this is the year American Werewolf in Paris got released to theaters (December 25th).

Directed by Anthony Waller and starring Tom Everett Scott and Julie Delpy the film had it pretty much made. It's a sequel to perhaps the best known werewolf film and even though it languished in production hell for six years, it pretty much only had to follow it's predecessor's formula. Combine some dark humor with horror and you have a pretty good chance at a good film, right. Right? I was excited for the film, you looked at the trailer and saw werewolves, cgi had just gotten a boost from Jurassic Park, it seemed almost a given that Paris would work. Oh how expectations were not only not met but crushed under the weight of well the 1990's.

I am flat out going to say it unlike American Werewolf in London, Paris just doesn't hold up over time. Sure AWIL has moments that scream 1980's but over all it still does hold up. However just 15 minutes into AWIP and you have a wide paint brush that slops the 90's decade all over it. THE FILM SCREAMS 90's, like some freakish aborted baby of Bill Clinton, Ally McBeal, and Monica Lewinsky.

Now don't get me wrong, the opening is fantastic. Showing the Cathedral of Notre Dame with a nice operatic theme music going, a man being chased down and dragged down to the sewers to presumably be eaten, nice start. Almost immediately we are teleported to a train where we meet probably the most stereotypical American twenty somethings pretending to be teenagers and doing so in the most obnoxious way possible. Tom Scott is annoying, not quirky or likable like David Naughton just ANNOYING. His companions are a jock headed Phil Buckman, and the over the top soon to be thankfully dead but then unthankfully brought back to undead status Vince Vieluf. They slobber their way on board a train to Paris insulting both American and French at the same time in the most 1990's over the top too many cliches being broken way. They are dare devils and they are going to jump off the Eiffel Tower. There they meet Julie Delpy who jumps to her attempted suicide to try and escape the film. However Tom Scott stops her thus making her and the audience groan through the next hour and a half. Tom falls in love with Julie but soon discovers she and a small gang of Parisian werewolves lead by Pierre Cosso as Claude.

Julie soon transforms into a werewolf in a scene that shows us the CGI werewolf...and this is not Rick Baker. It starts out alright, yellow eyes, fur, etc. Then we are treated to the image of her knees bending backwards and a new joint where none exist suddenly appearing to make the werewolf digi grade. This RUINS it. It shows a rule that other films would soon learn from CGI just because you can doesn't mean you should. The werewolves soon chase down anyone they can find leading Tom to run around the sewer getting bitten as he escapes. Soon he discovers he's a werewolf with some bizarre scenes that try to give us the nightmarish dreams that David Naughton had. They fail. Soon it's a chase between Julie and Tom and the other evil werewolves who are laughably trying to rid the world of fat lazy Americans. Did I mention how cliche this film is? Tom kills a girl and the undead make their unfunny appearance. It is soon revealed Julie's mother was the nurse form the original and that her and her step dad were working on a cure. However the cure has the opposite effect.

The climax of the film has the bad werewolves taking the "cure" transforming outside of the full moon to kill some drunken partying Americans in an abandoned church. The chase once again takes place under ground and one by one the werewolves are either killed or the police are in either case you are left wondering why you bothered to sit through the movie and why your popcorn has run out. Julie is shot once again trying to flee the film but is brought back and cured apparently by an Ambulance ride through Paris, it is a lovely city. Tom eats Claude heart because he's the werewolf that bit him so that's his way out. Movie ends with an implausible jump by Tom and Julie from the Statue of Liberty as they get married.

What is missing? Everything that made AMIL great that's what. The undead lack any and all of the cool dark bleak humor in the first film, the CGI werewolves when you can see them look rattish and malformed, the gripping sad ending of the original, the bleakness of London is replaced by the picturesque Paris, too many underground shots, and worse of all the paper cut out characters that you simply DO not care about. In the end I almost root for the villains simply to see them killing the :"fat, lazy and the stupid" until I realize they too are pretty stupid. A group of werewolves eating humans every full moon, cool idea, however the way Claude and company do it COULD NOT HELP but attract attention!!! Not to mention there's like five of them and they some how plan to change the world? Well you better start recruiting. In fact if you watched the trailer you would have thought that was what Claude was doing, recruiting Americans to become blood crazed werewolves. Ok that would have been MUCH better than the lame ass attempt of trying to re create the original.

This is were American Werewolf in Paris fails and falls flat. It tries so hard to be like American Werewolf in London that it sacrifices originality. Everything is redone but pumped full of the 1990's and poor characters that you ultimately want to kill it with fire.

CGI: The biggest change for werewolves in this film was the movement to CGI from traditional makeup. It had promise, some of the scenes with the werewolves do look good. However given the endless possible ways CGI could have made werewolves we are treated to a final image of a nearly hairless, rat looking, some what human in the face werewolf model that runs around on all fours like a pit bull. I am not sure if they were trying to do more of a human look or not but the finished product just looks horrible. The transformation of Julie is an example of yeah it might sound and look cool but it ultimately looks stupid and drastically over done. The CGI in this film is wasted especially when you remember that just three years before Jurassic Park came out. One can go back and listen to how excited everyone on the crew was to bring something new to the scream with computer animation. New? Sure if new is crappy looking computer generated were rats, you won. Congrats but werewolves not so much.

2 1/2 out of 10 claws I give this. From the nonsensical "curing" of Julie Delpy to the miss casting of Tom Everett Scott, the failure of CGI to even make an effort, and to the obvious ode/insult towards the original this film just fails over all. What do I like? Some of the concepts are cool, werewolves having a more global view of humanity, the opening, the scenes of Tom chasing a helpless girl through a cemetery are all good, but these moments are over shadowed by the overall failure to deliver. This sadly was a case of what CGI would do, replacing a good story and characters with oooo and ahhh effects that just leave you numb and wanting so much more.