A boring and clichAcd love story of forbidden love between the supernatural and humans, ""Blood and Chocolate"" is as bad as its laughable name. Based on the successful young adult novel by Annette Curtis Klause, the movie focuses on 19-year-old Vivian (Agnes Brucker), teenage girl by day and dangerous werewolf by night, and her struggle to choose between life as a mortal or as a ""loup-garoux,"" running wild at night with her pack.
Her choice is made even more difficult by Aiden (Hugh Dancy), a poor graphic artist who takes a special interest in werewolves, as he and Vivian begin seeing each other and become romantically involved. Unfortunately, Vivian's werewolf posse isn't too pleased when they discover her new human boyfriend, and Gabriel (Olivier Martinez), the ""alpha dog"" of the pack who had chosen Vivian to be his newest ""mate,"" decides that Aiden would make a better lunch than a lover, forcing Vivian to choose once and for all between her pack or her heart.
Made by the producers of ""Underworld,"" one would expect graphic monsters and gratuitous special effects; however, neither are found here. Rather than portray the werewolves as the stereotypical half-human half-beast, the studio decided to save some money and use actual wolves, whose mangy fur and snarling teeth still fail to inspire any fear in the audience. Not that there was any fear to begin with—despite the movie's promise of being a romance/horror film, any scares are completely absent, and the characters' attempts at being intimidating inspire more giggles than gasps. It doesn't help that the majority of the werewolf clan resembles a Euro-trash N*SYNC, prowling dance clubs for victims and getting around town by hopping and jumping off walls (an effect that looks goofy rather than cool).
Fans of ""Underworld"" will be especially disappointed by the lack of violence—although there are a few pointless ""hunts"" where the wolves run wild through the woods chasing after a human sacrifice, only one major death occurs. And for a werewolf movie, the special effects are amusingly simple—the humans transform by running and performing a flip in midair, during which they glow yellow before landing on the ground with four legs. Their gymnastic skills are impressive, but the transformations are overall unexciting and just one of the film's many failures.
The actors fare well enough despite the poor production: Dancy effectively captures Aiden's curious innocence, and Bruckner has the looks and the ambiguity to hold her own as a sexy were-babe, while Martinez mostly sulks around and perfects his sultry glower.
However, for such a cinematic bomb, the movie held a lot of potential. Curtis Klause's novel was well written and an exciting read, and should have been quite easily adapted to the big screen. Disappointingly, the writers destroyed the script much like the werewolves destroyed their victims, butchering and ripping the story until it was a mere shred of what it had been. Personalities were swapped and pivotal events changed, but what was most frustrating was the ending—rather than go with the climatic and unexpected ending of the novel, the writers chose instead to finish with typical Hollywood blandness—a tame ending for a movie that should have been allowed to run wild.
