Form the opening bungee jump this tries to be an adrenalin charged version of the first film, but it just falls flat in so many ways The central romance is unconvincing, the story just has too many daft elements, and this just misses the simplicity of the original, and tries to be more "interesting" by being more complex, but just ends up a mess

There are hopefully very few occasions one might feel the urge to flee the theatre long before the closing credits roll. With AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS however, your chances of experiencing this are better than average.In making a follow-up to a wonderful and respected classic like it's predecessor, the makers of this had to realise that they had signed on to meet certain standards and expectations. Right from the unnecessary and absurd Eiffel Tower sequence early on, it seems clear that the very mentality of this film is way, way off. Whilst I laughed at the humour in the original, here I cringed at the many embarrassing efforts of AWIP to generate laughs. Equally, I was left cold by it's failure to offer a single scare to speak of.Elsewhere, utterly mindless (and arguably tasteless) sequences by Jim Morrison's grave at Pere Lachaisse among others, seem more preoccupied showcasing some of Paris' famed locations than furthering the story in any meaningful way - a far cry from the Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square set-pieces in the original.The lead characters seem to epitomise the very cliched definition of annoying American tourists seen through the eyes of the rest of the world and this misrepresentation makes it difficult to take from them anything like the appeal found in David Naughton and Griffin Dunne in the 1981 original. It might be unfair to measure this movie by comparison to the original but there is little doubt that there would still lie within, the same complaints with AWIP even if judged purely on it's own merits as they are so glaringly evident.Enough has already been said about the awful CGI werewolf FX and this stands true - again - even without comparison to Rick Baker's extraordinary practical transformation wizardry 17 years earlier. Quite literally, between the story, characters, performances, digital disasters and half-witted humour, I felt - within the first five minutes - a sinking sensation in my stomach that created a knot which sat there and left me numb with disbelief long after the merciful arrival of the end credits. Only Delpy's presence brought any kind of relief in the interim.

Released in late 1997, "An American Werewolf in Paris" chronicles events in Paris when a trio of American daredevils (Tom Everett Scott, Phil Buckman & Vince Vieluf) encounters a suicidal young woman (Julie Delpy) at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The girl turns out to be the daughter of the werewolf from 1981's "An American Werewolf in London" and her mother (from the earlier movie) and stepfather are trying to remedy her lycanthropic disease. She's somehow linked to a clandestine order of werewolves in the city who regularly lure people to raves in order to feast on 'em. There's also a subplot about a drug that allows werewolves to change at any time with no need for a full moon. Julie Bowen, Pierre Cosso and Thierry Lhermitte have peripheral roles. This is a stand-alone movie and so it's not necessary to see 1981 film first; I recommend catching it just for the first half. The Eiffel Tower sequence is particularly creative and thrilling. Despite what some say, Everett Scott makes for a quality main character, just as effective as David Naughton in the original, if not more. Like the first film, the movie expertly mixes horror with comedy. There are spooky scenes set in catacombs, dungeons and graveyards with the requisite full moon looming, all to a rockin' soundtrack. Unfortunately, the second half starts to mark time by becoming redundant and dull compared to the excellent set-up. And the CGI werewolves are decidedly cartoony by today's standards; although I'm sure they were pretty state-of-the-art at the time.The movie runs 105 minutes and was shot in Paris with studio work done elsewhere. DIRECTOR: Anthony Waller. WRITERS: Tim Burns, Tom Stern & Waller.GRADE: B-

When is a sequel not really a sequel but still sucks like one? That would be when you take a minor horror classic like An American Werewolf in London and, 16 years later, remake it as a lame action-comedy called An American Werewolf in Paris. Truly, this is the sort of flick that leaves you in awe of how good the drugs must be out in Hollywood. Getting John Landis to do a sequel to his original 4 later? Anybody could come up with that idea. How doped out of your mind do you have to be to wait another 12 years and think of doing it without Landis? How does that suggestion even get out of your mouth before someone else interrupts with "That's stupid"?Andy McDermott (Tom Everett Scott) is a young man who, along with his nerdy friend Brad (Vince Vieluf) and his jock buddy Chris (Phil Buckman), has embarked on a "daredevil tour" of Europe. Andy is the sort of guy who believes in love rather than sex, which makes him just the sort of romantic to fall for a girl who tries to kill herself by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Andy saves her by bungee jumping after her (don't ask), only to wind up in the hospital with the one of the least medically-credible bandaged heads in cinema history. Andy and his friends track the girl down after she vanishes, only to discover that she's a werewolf and she's got some lycanthropic associates of her own, one of whom is the American-hating Claude (Pierre Cosso). Andy gets bit and becomes a werewolf, only to find that he's got to stop Claude and his gang from using a drug to transform into werewolves at will and massacring a bunch of boozed up Yanks.The first hour of so of An American Werewolf in Paris cycles through most of the same stuff as the superior first film, playing everything much more for laughs than anything else, and then the last half hour turns into some terrible buddy-cop comedy. Now dated CGI substitutes for the more shocking physical special effects of the original and the whole "haunted by the spirits of the dead" thing becomes a running gag. Julie Delpy does briefly take off her top, but Julie Bowen does not.The most descriptive comparison I can come up with is that, as An American Werewolf in London is to The Wolfman, An American Werewolf in Paris is to Abbot and Costello meet The Wolfman. There's about one honestly scary/unsettling scene in the entire motion picture and the rest of it is devoted to cheap jokes and dull humor, without anyone even close to as talented as either Abbot or Costello. Not that Tom Everett Scott or Julie Delpy are all that bad. They're simply stuck in an ill-conceived script helmed by a director who wants more to be funny than frightening, even though he's clearly better at the latter. By which I mean there are more moments intended to be scary that are staged effectively, but almost all of them are defanged by Anthony Waller's comedic emphasis.This movie is just not good at all. I hope the Hollywood drug culture has calmed down enough so we aren't subjected to An American Werewolf in Budapest in 2013.