An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

Unlike its sibling film from London, this one features a booming, cinematic soundtrack with violins and cellos and whatnot. Indeed, we even open into a symphony scene, and a man being eaten by an unseen monster in the sewers while the timpani thunders. It cuts straight to some raspy alternative rock and three sexist and xenophobic American frat bro dudes on a French train. Guess what, they're going to Paris.

There's a Redd Kross song in this film somewhere, but it's not playing yet; we have to get through Better than Ezra first. The frat bros break into the eiffel tower to camp and stare at the stars. All of those stars that twinkle so clearly over Paris. One of them is about to bungee jump when they're interrupted by a suicidal young lady who somehow doesn't notice any of the frat bros right behind her. She's going to jump and he's going to bungee jump after her, I guarantee it. Yes. He saves her life, by her shoe, which she falls out of, and it becomes a Cinderella story.

The guy whacks his head on the bungee rebound and is hospitalized, paralleling the plot of the superior London-based film. It's a full-blown slapstick comedy, and the guys keep making those distinctly late-90s comedy over-emphasized upper lip movements. It's frequently overexposed and over-sharpened, so it looks like the characters are photoshopped onto the background. He instantly tracks down the suicidal girl at her house and takes her on a date, where he slapsticks around stupidly and throws condoms in her coffee cup. It cuts terribly from the café to her riding a bicycle, and flitters back and forth between all of various emotional film score stereotypes.

While An American Werewolf in London is an unserious film, An American Werewolf in Paris is not a serious film. It is 90s pulp comedy: badly written, badly acted, badly edited, derivative, and purposeless, with reasonably high quality sets and a professional score and cinematography, but with nothing to offer except cheap sitcom-quality gags and Bush songs. Aside from Parisian landscape shots and some accents, nothing about the movie is really French. On the few occasions when two French people are alone together, they speak English because Americans can't handle subtitles.

The guys find their way to a party where they expect the girl to be, but all of the guests transition to werewolves instead. The transitions aren't bad, but the CGI isn't as good as the stretched-latex transition of the original. They aren't much concerned with progressing a meaningful story, so they the wolves just hop around dismembering people in the dance club to the pulse of strobe lights and the throbbing beats of Skinny Puppy (or whoever). The wolves are acceptably decent puppets up close, and awful CGI from afar.

The prince charming kid gets a bite on the foot and wakes up a werewolf. The suicidal French girl removes her shirt and gives him her boobs so he'll calm down, which is a normal thing that people do. He meets her mom, who is a zombie, gets scares, and slapsticks right out of a window. He goes to a restaurant, picks up an American girl, and insults the French people and language.

As in London, his dead friend comes back as a ghost in Limbo to warn him about lycanthropy. His first warning is that werewolves have poor taste in women. I feel shame on behalf of the writers. The American girl walks around a cemetery talking to herself about stereotypical sitcom stuff ("maybe somebody could notice my hair, huh!?") until he wolfs out and eats her. A policeman who was walking his dog inside a mausoleum fails to save her. It's a nice cemetery, at least.

He gets arrested, the cops leave him in the morgue, and his victims come back as The Frighteners ghosts for a slapstick routine. While the ghosts argue, he is kidnapped by a pack of werewolves dressed like The Village People who have some stupid cult backstory that is presented too late to care about.

The French werewolves throw a party for Americans so they can wolf out and eat them, presumably because Americans are Cool Ranch™ flavored. There's a bunch of yelling and CGI and Skinny Puppy. The remaining few kids Scooby Doo around in some catacombs, a couple of werewolves fight each other, and the frat bro shoots his his girlfriend. Frat bro and cult wolf fight on a subway. The frat bro wolfs out and devours the other guy's heart, thus fulfilling the silly mystical requirements to break his werewolf curse.

It ends as stupidly as it began, and Redd Kross plays us out.