tek's rating: ¼

Teen Wolf (PG)
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This came out in 1985. I must have first seen it on VHS sometime in the 80s, though I'm not sure exactly when. There was an animated TV spin-off in 1986 (possibly before I saw the movie), and in 1987 there was a sequel, Teen Wolf Too (which I guess I didn't see until many years later). So anyway, this movie is kind of nostalgic, but I don't think I saw the entire movie again until 2013. It's really not a great movie, but it's not bad, either. Um... and it sort of just barely qualifies as "supernatural," because it's got a couple of werewolves. But mostly it's a very 80s teen dramedy, with an almost Afterschool Special-like vibe to it. It's kind of confusing, because for awhile it seems like the message is that the main character needs to learn to accept the werewolf part of himself, but then it kind of switches gears, and he has to learn to accept the human part of himself. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Michael J. Fox plays Scott Howard, a teenager who isn't very popular. He's on his high school basketball team, but the team pretty much sucks. (Their coach, Bobby Finstock, doesn't seem to care much, either, but he's rather amusing.) Also, Scott has a crush on a girl named Pamela, who barely knows he's alive. However, he's got a good friend named Boof, a girl who obviously would like to be more than friends with him, though he doesn't think of her that way. (I'm sure I always had a movie crush on Boof, though.) Scott also has a few other friends. The main one is Stiles, who I always thought was pretty cool. And there's a guy named Lewis, whom I didn't remember at all from the first time I watched. And there's a guy called Chubs (or Chubby), another player on the basketball team. (I kind of vaguely remembered him, but none of the other players on the team, who really aren't very important to the story.) Also, Scott's mother is dead. And I remembered him complaining about having a $6 haircut, which is what I paid for haircuts in the 90s, and I never had a problem with it. Oh, and Pamela had a boyfriend named Mick.

Anyway... after awhile, Scott finds out that he's a werewolf, which understandably comes as a shock to him, and he's not happy about it. He doesn't want to talk to his father, Harold, about it, even though Harold is also a werewolf and seems like a really good guy. But he does finally confide in Stiles, who immediately sees the potential for profit. But Scott still wants to hide the truth about himself. And then during a basketball game, the truth comes out... and being the wolf makes him good at basketball. And at pretty much everything. So everyone at school starts to love "Teen Wolf," as Stiles calls him. Even Pamela finally gets interested in him, which of course upsets both Mick and Boof. And eventually, Scott's teammates start getting annoyed that he's winning all their games for them, without the rest of them getting to play at all, really. Oh, and there's a vice principal named Rusty Thorne, who hates Scott, because of old issues between him and Scott's dad.

And I guess that's all I want to say, except the movie has a predictably happy, sappy ending, in the way only 1980s movies do. Especially sports movies. Or romances. Or family movies. Or coming of age movies. Or... whatever. It's a mix of all these kinds of things. And it's kind of lame, but like I said, nostalgic. And fun. And amusing. And I do still like Boof.

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