Teen Wolf Too

Whoahoho! There is no other word to describe this wonderfully delightful film of a college student who learns he can turn into a wolf whenever he wants!!! If you thought Teenwolf was good, just you wait and see how his cousin, played by Justin Bateman ,portrays a new role for the howlingly funny series of movies! One would think that Michael J Fox was an irreplaceble figure in this series, but not so fast my good friend! Justin Bateman was downright hilarious, and I was shocked to find that he was not nominated for an Oscar for this performance. This movie absolutely needed to be made! I'd say the high point of the movie comes when the wolf, with all his new college buddies, dances to a musical montage of "Do you love me (now that I can dance)"....Here's to hoping for a Teenwolf Three coming out soon!!!!

I saw the first "Teen Wolf" movie when it first came out on video. The fact that it's taken me more than twenty years to see the sequel should tell you what I thought of the first movie, even though I was in the target audience (teenagers) at the time. Well, guess what - this sequel manages to be even worse! It's a lazy sequel, for one thing following the basic plot of the first movie (Teen is a loser, teen finds out he can change into a werewolf, teen gets drunk with power, teen becomes a real jerk, teen realizes he's been a jerk, teen plays in sports tournament at climax intentionally not using his werewolf powers.) To make matters worse, this time around this plot moves at a snail's pace, with only sporadic attempts at humor (all of which crash to the ground.) Jason Bateman here is a bland presence, alternately being whiny or befuddled. The only good thing I can say about this movie is that unlike many other '80s comedies, this one isn't very dated in its fashions and other cultural touches.

Does Hollywood ever learn? You can't top a film like 'Teen Wolf.' All you can do is defile its existence by producing a sequel like this. The movie isn't worth watching unless you're a Jason Bateman fanatic or a masochist.

The plot from the first movie is reduxed here, and poorly. The message is the same. The moral is the same. The only thing that's changed is the faces, because the majority of the cast from the first movie was wise to avoid this bomb. The dad from 'Teen Wolf' makes an appearance, and that's all I can remember (without checking the listing). A forgettable flop.

Although he is Scott's cousin, Todd Howard has managed to dodge the "family problem" and is a perfectly normal young man starting a promising college career. Despite being very weedy and interested in becoming a vet, Todd has managed to get a sports scholarship without being sure why. Turns out that the Dean has assumed that Todd can do for the college boxing team what Scott did for his high school basketball team what with him being a werewolf and everything. Todd discovers this quickly and is keen to disappoint but his genes betray him as the "family problem" manifests itself suddenly. Overnight Todd is a star in the ring and on the campus – but can he manage this sudden change?

When I read overly negative reviews of the first Teen Wolf film I can only silently shake my head and wonder what the same viewer makes of the sequel. I say this because, as basic as the original film is, Teen Wolf Too/Two/2/whatever is like the makers condensed the original film to the basics and then just put that out on as little money, time and effort as possible. It shows in all areas of the film but I have to start somewhere so I will do so with the actual story. The flow of it is this (a) studious kid doesn't really fit into school/college, (b) kid becomes werewolf, (c) kid becomes popular but also a major a**hole, (d) kid learns life lesson. OK, so you can see it is essentially the same film as the first time, with the sport and setting different. In terms of the telling of the story though, we literally jump between these parts without any gradual development between them. I'm not saying it needed a lot of complexity but maybe just one or two scenes bridging the gap between the elements – instead it will literally have 1 scene of him becoming a werewolf for the first time, then the next scene is him popular and doing a 50's twist (for some reason) at a party – not even a bridge which shows him winning over an initially hesitant campus. This is the same across the whole film and it makes it weaker as a film – a problem considering it would still have not been great with these scenes.

This slapdash approach is reflected in the whole film and it is no surprise that the script is poor. The dialogue matches the "good enough" approach to the narrative – ie lines are clunky, obvious and lacking anything that would make you care enough to listen. However, producing even this level of trash was clearly too much for the writers because they appear to have been too busy to get laughs, fun or energy into the script. Visually it looks cheap. The sets are faded and unconvincing while the aim appears to have been to try and pull off "crowd" scenes with as few extras as possible. The wolf makeup is also really bad – never great of course but in Too it looks like a mask purchased at a corner store.

With all this it is no surprise that the cast can do nothing with it. I feel sorry for Bateman but he is poor here and cannot do anything with the material handed to him. He has almost zero chemistry with Chandler as well – again neither of them helped by the material having no bridge between "oh hi" and "you are the love of my life". Astin must have hoped for more but, even though he has a glint in his eyes that suggests a fun role in the film, he does nothing and has nothing to do. Fratkin and Holton are both annoying and deliver nothing in the way of laughs that the writers clearly just assumed they would do on their own (wackiy guy and fat guy – practically writes itself.....errr, no, no it doesn't).

The end product is not so much a terrible film in that everything was misjudged but rather a terrible film because nobody seems to have given a single, flying f**k about it from conception to final delivery. The plot is the same as the first film but yet so much worse and basic, with similar dialogue. The "feel" of the film is likewise cheap and "make-do" and it is no surprise that nobody in the cast can do much of anything with the whole affair. The only value the sequel has is making the first Teen Wolf film seem more fresh and filled with fun that it was.

And to think that people complained that Return of the Jedi was too much like Star Wars...

They obviously hadn't seen this movie, which is basically the exact plot of the original with different actors. Not even a token piece of originality.

This is cash-in sequeling at it's worst, equalled only by the likes of Grease 2. Avoid it, or you'll think you're watching the original with new voices dubbed over the top.