BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE

This is one of those films where it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when, where, how or why it derailed.

Oh, sure, it seems very promising: a slick, modern-day werewolf movie – helmed by Katja von Garnier (Bandits) and brought to the screen by the folks who blessed us with a hawt, vampiric Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight PVC (in Underworld). Its heroine is a tough but comely blonde with a secret, and its central villain is played by über-sexy Olivier Martinez. It looks like it might be a riotgrrrl’s dream come true, right? Wrong. Instead, it’s unintentionally cheesy and ever so slightly borders on camp.

Agnes Bruckner stars as Vivian, a German-American-Romanian (long story), who works in a Bucharest chocolate shop by day and fights her bloodlust by night because she’s a werewolf and belongs to the world’s most dysfunctional clan of lycans. Apparently, Vivian is also next in line to “marry” the family’s brooding, greasy, Eurotrashy patriarch, Gabriel (Martinez), who takes a new wife every seven years to keep life interesting. But Viv’s not so thrilled about becoming a concubine – or, for that matter, hunting humans for sport – and her inner struggles are amplified when she meets and starts to fall for artist Aiden (Hugh Dancy)…who just happens to be working on a graphic novel about werewolves. How perfect! Not surprisingly, Vivian’s fellow werewolves aren’t too keen on her hooking up with, well, their prey, and they promptly intervene. Most furious of all is her rabidly loopy cousin, Rafe (Bryan Dick), who’s Gabriel’s son and the power-hungry heir to the whole furry empire.

What ensues is a needlessly tiresome exercise where the species-crossed young lovers try to elude their detractors, and where Olivier Martinez tries (and fails) to nail down one of at least four different accents he adopts throughout the course of the film. (In case you’re keeping track, he drifts in and out of what sounds like: Spanish, French, Italian and non-descript Eastern European.)

But, really, the whole thing unravels and winds up a silly dud. For starters, there are the accents, which span the globe despite the fact that all these characters live in the same city and are supposed to be related. Rafe’s British and so are all his mates; his mother (Katja Riemann) is German, despite living in Romania; his dad, as mentioned, is all over the map; and Viv’s American, which is explained in a laughably convoluted moment where she recounts her childhood as a transplanted orphan.

Then we have the werewolves themselves. More specifically, their hilarious behavior. Gabriel leads as though he went to The Dog Whisperer School of Canine Management, using César Millan-esque techniques and terminology about the importance of “the pack.” I kept waiting for him to sharply poke one of his unruly minions and issue a stern “shhhhhhhhpt” for stepping out of line. When the pack meets, they all kneel, sweep back their hair and expose their necks to Gabriel. Why? Doesn’t this seem like something a big group of vampires might do? Wouldn’t a big group of werewolves do something more breed appropriate, like drop trou and turn their bums skyward for a friendly sniff?

And don’t even get me started on their ridiculous pre-hunt ritual of taking off their jackets. Just their jackets. As they’re about to pursue some unfortunate victim, every werewolf (still in human form) starts to undress, presumably because, you know, they’ll shapeshift and need to be naked or else they’d be running around as wolves dressed in pants and shoes and the like. But, no, it’s just their topcoats that are taken off and, for some of the hotter young men, their shirts (one assumes this is meant to appeal to the young women in the theater). Then, jackets safely laid on the ground, they start to run. And run. And run. And run….until, at some predetermined point, they leap in swan-dive fashion into the air and, in a glowing cloud that completely obscures the transformation and saves tons of money on CGI effects, become wolves. Without clothes and shoes. Where do the clothes go? If the clothes evaporate, why not take them off when the jackets are doffed? Isn’t that a huge waste of resources, to have to buy a new outfit after every kill? The fact that I spent so much time contemplating this complexity is a sign of how invested I was in the action. Which is to say, not very.

There’s also an abandoned storyline about Vivian being some kind of “chosen one,” as per a cryptic (but never outlined) “prophesy,” who’ll lead her kind into the “Age of Hope.” They talk about it very early on in the film, and it seems like something that might matter (what with being a prophesy and all), but it’s never explained or explored and just kind of left dangling in the ether.

Bruckner, whose biggest claim to fame is the indie drama Blue Car, is overwhelmingly meh here. She’s too bland to carry the film and nowhere near as femme fatale-y as the posters would have you believe. Dancy isn’t much better, and Martinez is so over-the-top that people laughed out loud at his venomous pontificating. The special effects, which are surprisingly limited given the genre, look extremely low-budget when they do appear, and the film’s big finale suffers greatly as a result.

Fans of this sort of movie will no doubt be disappointed, especially if they shell out money to see it on the big screen. Take it from me, if you feel you absolutely must see this one, wait for DVD. And, while you’re waiting, start to lower your expectations. It’ll help you more than you know.