1 out of 5

Director: Kevin Munroe

Wow. So – no bones about the comic-to-movieness here. It only bears a passing resemblance but I think that was to be expected – while Tin-Tin might be getting a mega budget go-through, Dylan Dog is not as world-weary, and is very Italian, and certainly wouldn’t have the same vague general recognition that Tin-Tin might engender. So assumedly some producers bought up the rights and tried to jump on the monster/fantasy bandwagon and director Kevin Munroe claimed he could do it on the cheap. Which is all fine and good… if you can deliver an entertaining film. I didn’t mind Munroe’s CGI TMNT film, but his sense of timing was quirky there. It worked because the Turtles have always been a touch cheesy and off-kilter, even in there darker incarnations. But catapulted into a physical camera and actors to move around and stage, Munroe loses something important in the real world – a sense of space and place. Huge sets come across as the confined square of your screen and the New Orleans setting is wasted for drab street to drab church to drab club, etc. The huge scope / quick pacing that worked well in an animated movie also feels gross here, the audience – even completely unawares of the world of Dylan Dog – feeling like we just skimmed some massive history of werewolves and vampires and zombies and humans in a short amount of time. I didn’t mind the cheeky humor – Routh’s nigh-bad delivery and Huntington’s sarcasm worked well with the light tone and the cinematography / lighting, honestly, was well done. But the story stutters out w/o making us care one iota and that cheap budget is blown on a couple nice costumes (at least most of the effects were practical…). This started out as two stars but devolved as the story attempted to build in the last fifteen minutes. Sorry, DD, this would’ve been a fun film in the hands of more confident writers (whole films of voiceover narratives rarely work…) – and a director who brushed up on some post-90s techniques.