Wolfman

Benicio Del Toro should be glad that the Academy has no process in place for retroactively rescinding its awards, because whatever the Traffic Oscar winner is doing in Joe Johnston’s toxic The Wolfman, it sure ain’t acting. It’s not that we don’t buy Del Toro as a shape-shifting lycanthrope (makeup artist Rick Baker does a fine job), it’s that we never buy him as a walking, talking, clothes-wearing human being named Larry Talbot. Del Toro pouts and putters through most of his scenes like a zombified dandy on pain medication—and that’s before he’s bitten by the beast. The rest of the film is everything you’d expect and nothing you’d want—a CGI horror show with a chemistry-free romance and some of the dopiest bloodletting in recent memory, The Wolfman makes Van Helsing seem comparatively clever and full of purpose.