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movie review
WOLFS
Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (language throughout and some violent content). On AppleTV+ Sept. 27.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt made a public stink when Apple shifted the release of their new movie “Wolfs,” for which they were paid tens of millions to make, from theatrical to streaming.
“It is a bummer,” Clooney moaned at the Venice Film Festival when asked about his paycheck, er, sorry, his movie.
Really, the pair should send Apple CEO Tim Cook an Edible Arrangement for saving them the embarrassment of what would have been a giant flop.
“Wolfs,” a so-called comedy written and directed by Jon Watts in which Clooney and Pitt play rival New York fixers tasked with discreetly disposing of a dead body, is a dreadful, laugh-free slog that tests the limits of what wrecks star power alone can salvage.
The A-list presence of Brad and George cannot mask the elementary school dialogue they utter, the jumbled tone and Dollar Store aesthetic. In fact, their attachment to this compost only exacerbates its many, many problems.
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The boldface names suggest a certain level of quality — or, at the very least, competence — that this movie does not meet. Maybe I’d be more forgiving if this buddy-cop retread starred Stephen and Billy Baldwin. Alas.
As it stands, woeful “Wolfs” won’t make you howl so much as huff and puff.
Watts’ 108-minute yawn begins with a woman’s scream. That’s Margaret (Amy Ryan), and she has just encountered a naked, dead body in a luxury hotel suite.
Covered in the young man’s blood, Marge lowers the blinds and shakily picks up her iPhone. Apple, trying to make lemonade from its lemon, can at least hawk some mobile devices.
“I was told if I ever need serious help to call this number,” she says. “There is only one man in the city who can do what you do.”
In walks black-clad Clooney, whose character has no name or, you know, traits. He dons rubber gloves and prepares to make the damaging situation disappear.
But it turns out he’s not the only man. A few minutes later, a downcast Pitt knocks on the door.
His character has been hired by the hotel’s owner, a disembodied voice, to complete the exact same task since it turns out Barbara is a powerful district attorney who slept with the dead guy, and the proprietor doesn’t want her business tarnished by scandal.
(Every New Yorker knows that high-profile crimes actually make locales more alluring. Ask Sparks Steak House.)
The two shadowy fixers have never met or even have any familiarity, but they immediately hate each other for some vague reason. And that, readers, is the only joke of this entire movie: Anything Brad can do, George can do better.
Watts, whose “Spider-Man” films for Sony are great fun, tosses away centuries of comedy rules by having both Pitt and Clooney play the straight man.
So, we grimace as two smug, deflated, blasé dudes speak so robotically they could be in a biopic called “Siri.”
Two unspeakably bland men being quietly annoyed at each other is not humor as the world understands it. What’s funny is how much product is in their mummified hair.
In the pantheon of Clooney and Pitt collaborations, I’d sooner rewatch “Oceans 12.”
“Wolfs” briefly finds a pulse from the introduction of the only actor who’s awake, the talented Austin Abrams, who plays Kid. Geeky and inquisitive, he tags along with George and Brad on their underwhelming tour of New York’s underbelly.
But as soon as the focus shifts back to the two huge movie stars, our eyes glaze over. They noncommittally natter on about Croatian and Albanian crime syndicates and get in an impressively boring shootout while always being totally unbelievable in their roles.
The sole virtue of “Wolfs” being released straight to streaming is the incredible ease with which viewers can switch over to “Oceans Eleven” after the first five minutes.
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