Sometimes you just want to review a film with a percent sign in the title, knowwhatI’msayin’? Good, cuz I don’t. Do I need a percent sign quota that badly? On this blog, I have review over 2,300 films and not a single one has a percent sign in the title. Did I want to see this film? Not really. Was I surprised by its lack of quality? Not really. Is there anything I take from this film? Not really.
That said, I’ve seen far worse. 100% Wolf is simply a poor premise indulged. The lessons aren’t terrible, nor the action, nor the animation. But this film is 100% stupid. Take The Lion King, (or Hamlet if you prefer), animate it, remove anything touchy, and set it in urban Australia with 98% benevolent werewolves, and you’ll get about 80% of this 100% Wolf. I can’t tell you what to do with the other 20%; it’s worth > 2% to me, but can be sold on the open market at 60% of face value at 15% APR. Now, if you amortize that over 30 years at 12%, you still get a bad movie.
Freddy Lupin (voice of Ilai Swindells) is a prince among werewolves. Literally. The young master is destined to be head of the pack one day and do all that crazy werewolf shit like … rescue folks from burning buildings!? That’s what werewolves do, huh? Ummm, ok. And they’re fully sentient as humans when they do this? Ummm, ok. And they’re born, not made? Ummm, ok. And you don’t get your magical werewolf transformation power until you reach an exact age? Ummm, ok. I dare tell you that this film actually indulged in a fair amount of biology. Considering it got every little bit of it wrong, I’m quite confused as to why it took said tack. No matter.
Freddy the pup (well, he’s a boy; as I said above, they don’t have li’l wolves in this world) is tracking the pack one fateful night when he loses his father to a cliff and a demented ice cream vendor. The vendor has assumed the pack has dingo-ed the small boy and tries –good for him- to do the right thing. The conclusion of this scene, however, is an ice cream vendor-turned-werewolf hunter. Origin stories are hard!
Six years later, Freddy the orphan is ready transform into the Jack of Wolfman and a funny thing happens. And by “funny” I mean “not at all funny.” Freddy turns into a poodle. This is the joke. He’s supposed to be a big bad wolf and instead Freddy morphs into a toy category of dog. And Freddy doesn’t know how to be a wolf, much
less a dog. And then he gets lost in the city and the only help Freddy gets comes from dogs … except dogs hate werewolves, another subplot that makes no sense to me – dogs love dogs and dogs love humans; a werewolf is both.
Other than the stupid plot, one of the things that really irked me about 100% Wolf is Freddy. I didn’t see any quality in Freddy that made me want him to lead me anywhere. He isn’t strong or brave or smart or loyal or clever or anything you might want in an alpha. Even if Freddy morphed into a gorilla, I’d rather have an ordinary poodle leading my way. The film made plenty of noise about how it’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog and all … but Freddy didn’t seem to have any fight in him. It was quite frustrating, in fact, to have to root for this character.
If you have a family member that thinks the idea of a werepoodle is funny, well, I’m guessing this film might make the top 10 representations of such. Maybe. Surely the top 20, right? Personally, I found only one character worth my attention, and he seemed like a rip-off of the villain in Meet the Robinsons. I whole-heartedly encourage Australia to continue being part of the computer-generated animation craze … but let ‘em all know that quality film starts with the screenplay.
There once was a kid who near flipped
When the cool gene his generation skipped
His power, being dwarfed
Into a poodle he morphed
And piddled all over the script
Rated PG, 96 Minutes
Director: Alexs Staderman (Is this twins? What’s the plural of “Alex?”)
Writer: Fin Edquist
Genre: Somebody taught the Aussies how to animate by computer
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Poodle-holics, I suppose
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Fans of werewolves
