The Wolfman is an easy film to want to like - its leads are two Oscar-winning actors, it has been worked on by a 3-time Oscar-winning editor, an Oscar-winning make-up artist, and has a soundtrack composed by a 4-time Oscar nominee - yet as they say, you can't put lipstick on a pig, and regrettably, The Wolfman is all the wrong kinds of ugly.

You might be fooled by the opening frames, though, which are unmistakably gothic and indeed pleasant to look at. As we observe a poor sap being chased by the Wolfman, director Joe Johnston (Jumanji, Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo) cuts to the film's title logo after lingering on a shot of the Wolfman's lower body, rather than delivering the requisite kill. Jarring though it might be, this confidently fast-paced approach provides initial hope that the film might be a loving throwback to the classics of Hammer Horror's catalogue rather than the vapid double take that it is.

After Ben Talbot is found gruesomely murdered (following the pre-titles chase), his brother, Lawrence (Benicio Del Toro) is invited to return home by Ben's wife, Gwen (Emily Blunt). In this stead, Lawrence reunites with his long-estranged father, John (Anthony Hopkins), as they attempt to get to the bottom of who, or what, killed their brother and son, and he also becomes acquainted with Gwen. Oddly, though, these opening scenes are so thoroughly rudimentary that they needn't have been bothered with at all, for these fine actors are left with nothing to do but munch through dull dialogue for most of the film's first reel.

When director Johnston should be building suspense around the mysterious monster, he instead follows breadcrumbs that lead to a snoozy gypsy aside, and then indulges in an emotional vacuum of a flashback sequence that details the tragic circumstances of Lawrence's mother's death, while offering nothing truly interesting except a rather creepy shot of a young Anthony Hopkins, presumably achieved through CGI (ala Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in X-Men: The Last Stand). It's dispiriting that for a film that hits the credit roll in barely 90 minutes, there's nothing but tired exposition to kick things off.

But the action scenes deliver, right? Sadly, Johnston's pedestrian direction, combined with some visual effects work that gives the impression that the cinema projectionist has smeared butter over the print, prevents this. These ropey effects are surely not something Johnston had intended in order to evoke the kitschy Hammer style and tone, but ultimately that would have been more enjoyable (as would be simply watching the original film). Distracting from the shoddy work throughout, there are a few gory moments, but rarely does Johnston linger on the infliction of injury, and much of the time it is mostly implied, or we simply see a poor observer discover the strewn body. It shouldn't be difficult to make a hulking wolf tearing people apart exciting - especially given the 15-rating's liberal regard to violence - but the kills are mostly elementary (aside from one notable moment, where the Wolfman stabs his claw through a man's head), and there aren't enough money shots to satisfy even the easily pleased gorehound demographic.

Small pockets of solace surface whenever Hugo Weaving appears on screen though; he plays Francis Aberline, a dedicated Inspector tasked with solving the grisly murders around town. His moments of parlance with Lawrence and a barmaid are among the film's few delights, but he also looks the part, and of course, the soothing voice he perfected on the Matrix films is difficult to resist. However he, like the film on the whole, is underdeveloped and lacking in personality.

It's near the half-way mark that, invariably, Lawrence encounters his first transformation into the Wolfman, yet playing this waiting game with your audience is only effective if you've aptly built suspense in the preceding time, which this film does not do. Don't be surprised - as I wasn't - to see other members of the audience checking their watches well before we first get a proper glimpse at the Wolfman. In the film's defence, the transformative effects are far more convincing than the ones of the Wolfman in motion, but they are nevertheless outdone by Rick Baker's exceptional make-up work once the Wolfman is in full form. We can see Del Toro beneath, yet he's still very much a beast, and were the film overall strong enough to remain in the cultural consciousness until late this year, Baker may well have found himself up for an Oscar. Given how glaringly his make-up outdoes the film's corny visual effects (which reach their risible apex when we observe the Wolfman's blurry face running towards the screen), he's an easy guy to root for.

Most dispiriting out of everything, though, is the film's horrible editing. It's astounding to believe that legendary editor Walter Murch, who worked on Apocalypse Now and The Godfather films, had anything to do with it, and given the widely-cited reports that he was brought in after-the-fact to try and salvage things, the only plausible explanation is that he didn't have much to work with. Still, a mess is a mess; the film has no editing beat like even most mediocre films manage. There's no flow to the narrative, the worst example of which has one of Lawrence's massacres occurring (at night, obviously), and then, less than a minute later, it's the morning, his father is speaking to him, and he's being beaten down by the local vigilantes.

For a film paced with such moribundity in its opening reel, all of the meat is crammed higgledy-piggledy into a brief 20-minute middle section, occasioning an exceedingly obvious plot twist and another action scene with even more blurry CGI, before sandwiching it with more boring exposition, where a poor attempt is made to establish a romance subplot between Lawrence and Gwen.

By the final act, there was the genuine hope that Johnston would just go for broke, and the makings of an epic werewolf superbrawl certainly provided hope for this, but the scene - which was added late in production - is again, difficult to follow due to clunky editing and poor effects. This leads to an unsatisfactory climax that sows a seed for a sequel which I hope never happens.

Rick Baker is perhaps the only person who emerges out of this film entirely unscathed. Performance-wise, Weaving leads the pack, while Hopkins has a few amusing moments, but the rest of the cast understandably flounders in such murky waters. Walter Murch's failure to fix the film's inherent problems (caused in large part by Johnston's overdirection) and the risible visual effects make it the exact opposite of what it wants to be - and aside from the diverting sight of Emily Blunt's side-boob, this is one creature feature that sucks when it should bite.