A movie review! Aaaa-woooo!

I actually enjoyed Blood and Chocolate. Sure, the novel it was based on was somewhat butchered, and some of the dialogue was terrible, but I still liked it!

A bit of a review and some spoilers ahead...some pictures first.



Vivian (Agnes Bruckner) gets some advice from Rafe (Bryan Dick).



Cheers, Vivian!



Aiden (Hugh Dancy) doing some loup-garoux research, not knowing he is about to meet the real thing!



Gabriel (Olivier Martinez) confronts Aiden.



You go, girl!!!




I think I liked the movie better than the novel. The new location (Romania instead of Maryland!) made for some lovely scenery. I liked the music. I liked most of the actors. Hugh Dancy as Aiden was good, but I'd rather hear him speak in his natural British accent. I think that Agnes Bruckner (as Vivian) has potential. She seemed very confident despite some of the less than inspiring dialogue. Oh, yes. There were some howlers (pun intended) in there. And of course, I loved Bryan Dick. He is so good at being a total bastard...and yet, I felt a little sorry for him. He's only in about two thirds of the movie (and he dies horribly!), but he makes the most of his part. And have I mentioned lately that he's gorgeous?

The things I didn't like: Olivier Martinez and his bizarre accent. He couldn't decide what he was supposed to be, I guess, so he mixed his French with some weird bastardized Romanian. I also didn't like that his Gabriel was an asshole. That's one change from the book that sucks.

I liked Astrid (Katja Reimann), even though she's a sweetie instead of the evil bitch from the novel. I could buy her as Rafe's mother (though in the book, they weren't related at all, and were in fact lovers). The scene where she is told of Rafe's death is hearbreaking.

Now the ending...I know that earlier I was bitching about the changes, but now that I've seen the movie, I really don't mind so much. I'll just accept that the novel and film are two totally seperate entities. Sure, in the book, Aiden is a wimp, and doesn't accept Vivian when he learns her true nature. But a Hollywood picture needs a Hollywood ending, so Aiden is the hero and Gabriel the bad guy. Somehow it works. The ending is a bit silly (but of course it had to end with a building blowing up!), but I found the whole thing entertaining.

DVD goodies- a nice commentary with the director, Katja von Garnier and Martinez. The mystery of Bryan Dick's weird eyes is solved- his wolf had one brown and one blue eye, so von Garnier decided that Bryan would wear a brown contact lens. I loved hearing about the "wolf camp", and wish there had been a feature about it. There are also many deleted scenes. They weren't important to the story, but nice.

Bottom line- hardly a great movie, but an enjoyable way to pass an evening. Not a lot of blood, and it's more of a chick flick than a werewolf film, but fun. Not quite three stars out of four, but close.



The novel it was based on:



It's an entertaining read. Very different from the movie, but that's Hollywood for you!