Jerk Sandwich

Saw two movies this weekend with Mrs. Danglewood: The Wolfman and Big Fan.  The two movies couldn’t be further apart in setting, tone, or quality.

I’m not going to give a full, blow-by-blow account of The Wolfman.  The trailers pretty much tell you everything you need to know, and like Dracula and Frankenstein, the Wolfman is fairly ingrained into pop culture lore.  Overall, this remake is pretty boring.  The last 3/4 of the movie is essentially a chase scene in the dark, in England.  There is a little side scene that involves research and questioning gypsies… which has absolutely no effect on anything in the movie at all.  Ok, so there was no plot, but it’s a werewolf movie right?  Wrong, it’s a werebuffalo movie.  I can forgive the original Lon Chaney flick and how unwolflike he looked because that movie was made in 1941.  We’ve come a long ways, folks.  There’s no reason why a wolfman shouldn’t look, I don’t know– at least something like a wolf and not a rabid bison.  Forget that, though.  The real crazy transformation seemed to be Benecio Del Toro’s bizarre paunch-to-gaunt switches.  One moment he looks like he really has gorged himself on twenty villagers, then he looks like he’s headed to Scotland for some trainspotting.  Is this the first case of werefat?

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a terrible movie.  It’s just very boring.  Which might be worse.

Big Fan, on the other hand, was pretty good.  This is the Patton Oswalt movie you probably haven’t heard of.  In a nutshell:  he’s the ultimate Giants fan, he calls into radio talk shows to talk shit to Philly fans, and he lives with his mom.  I can’t say much more without giving away the plot.  Unlike The Wolfman, Big Fan has plenty of plot, and it brings up a real interesting choice for its protagonist.  To me, this is the Requiem for A Dream for sports fans, or fan of anything, really.  I think we’ve seen similar stabs at Trek, gaming, and scifi geeks, but this is really the first time we see it with sports.  Patton Oswalt does a fine job, and he gets better and better as the movie goes along.  We heard an interview with him on “Fresh Air” and Terry Gross asked him how he approached this character without overplaying how pathetic and what a loser he is, or something to that effect.  Oswalt said that the character doesn’t believe he’s a loser or pathetic, that he’s leading exactly the kind of life he wants.   And you can see that insight on the screen.

As a caveat: if you’re a big fan of Patton’s comedy, don’t expect it in this movie.  Instead, appreciate what this fat little troll can do so well, that so many popular actors seem to find so hard, which is to be genuine.