>>REVIEW
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE
STARRING Agnes Bruckner, Olivier Martinez and Hugh Dancy
DIRECTED BY Katja von Garnier
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Adapted from the novel of the same name by Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate is a barely recognizable retread that turns a young adult fantasy novel about a young girl coming of age into a product so generic that its banality is actually remarkable, a testament to the digestive process of uninspired executives.
"It’s a romantic action movie about werewolves?"
"And a human."
"Human, eh? Sounds like a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing."
"Yes, (sound of furious scratching as entire plot points are erased and rewritten) just like that."
Yes, things aren’t going well for young werewolf (rougarou) Vivian (Agnes Bruckner), whose oppressive extended family wants to see her marry uncle Gabriel (Oliver Martinez), the pack’s leader. There’s even the obligatory "why must we hide from the humans?" character, played in "sneering is acting" style by Bryan Dick before being killed off like the second-rate Tybalt he is.
Enter love interest Aiden (Hugh Dancy), a mass of tousled hair and ragged clothes who affects his own surprising transformation, from woe-is-me graphic novelist to action hero, in the film’s second act. Sound nonsensical? Don’t worry, we’re assured, his dad was an Army Ranger who taught him well. Too well. Aiden’s living in Hungary, not because Central Europe is an invitingly cheap location to film, but because there’s a warrant out for his arrest in the States. Dreamy.
Discounting ridiculous dialogue, bargain basement special effects, and all the other inevitabilities of fantasy-made-on-the-cheap, the movie is actually watchable if the audience doesn’t mind having their intelligence insulted for 90 minutes. Every element has been reduced to its lowest possible denominator, which at least means there are no twists the audience can’t predict long before they occur. Even the title is lazy – "chocolate" refers to a 15-minute sequence leading Aiden to discover that Vivian works for a chocolatier. With that eponym mashed in, director Katja von Garnier dusts off her hands and moves to the most important task at hand – making werewolves boring.
As a made-for-TV movie, Blood and Chocolate would have been a fine waste of a Sunday afternoon. "Hey, there’s a movie about werewolves," you might say, thanking God for an alternative to flyfishing programs. As a studio film, however, the project feels like a placeholder, lifelessly filling a slot in the season’s release schedule. Unfortunately, it fell this weekend to Epic Movie, a not-screened-for-critics piece of flotsam that received an astounding 0% on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Low as Blood and Chocolate may aim, it seems not to have aimed low enough. |
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