‘Family Pack’ (2024) Netflix Movie Review - Hunting Werewolves

In Family Pack (aka, Loups-Garous), writer-director François Uzan sees exposition as an itch that needs to be scratched to get to the good stuff. His definition of "good stuff," though, turns out to be pretty thin and narrow. He delivers the backstory and the necessary rules as quickly as possible so that he can concentrate on the jokes, which, alas, are so shallow they seem to be plucked from a kindergartener's book. According to IMDb, Family Pack is based on the board game by Philippe des Pallières and Hervé Marly. It indeed reminds you of Jumanji, as the story focuses on a group of people who get sucked into a card game (it was a board game there). How? Um, magic? For all its flaws, Jumanji at least provided its characters with plenty of exciting video game-like tasks. Moreover, actors like Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Kevin Hart supplied sufficient humor to the plot. Family Pack transports its characters to the year 1497 and then hits us with jokes that have the punchline, "It's the Middle Ages." Basically, the characters find some things ridiculous, like the public execution of a 19-year-old single woman, and then remind themselves that "It's the Middle Ages." You might chuckle the first time or even the second. But when the same thing is repeated the third and the fourth time, you begin to suspect that Uzan doesn't have much meat to offer to the audience.

Uzan maintains a swift, hectic momentum to hide his ineptness and his lack of imagination. The movie runs at an energetic pace, and you keep up with it because you want to be rewarded. However, apart from Jerome (Franck Dubosc) and his wife Marie (Suzanne Clément), no other character is memorable. Jean Reno's Gilbert often comes close to leaving an impression. He surprises us and his family members with his powerful punch, but his action is dismissed with brief reactions of shock. After this, he merely exists on the screen like Louis (Alizée Caugnies), Theo (Raphael Romand), and Clara (Lisa Do Couto Texeira). Someone comments about Louis' long hair, which makes them look like both a boy and a girl. This means Louis gets a superpower that literally allows them to wear the skin of any man or woman. Theo turns out to be a werewolf, which might be the film's way of saying that this cute little kid can be a naughty troublemaker (she tries to scare her father when he leans forward to kiss her). Since Clara is an influencer, she becomes invisible, so she has to wear rubber skin and a neck device to communicate with others. This is the movie's way of suggesting that online influencers hide their real self with makeup in front of their followers - or something like that.

Unlike the Jumanji films, Family Pack provides its characters with a single objective: Kill the werewolves. Even this task, however, is depicted without exhilaration. There is no sense of thrill or urgency in the scenes where the characters confront the werewolves. You never feel as if anyone is in mortal danger. One can say that we should not expect such "heavy feelings" from a comedy adventure, but shouldn't the screen be vibrating with excitement? Shouldn't the jokes be witty? Why do the on-screen events look so unadventurous? The humor sometimes lands with force. When blood falls on Jerome's face, he says he will dry-clean his clothes. A few moments later, Marie and Gilbert taste the blood. And I was pleasantly surprised by Uzan's commitment to a gag involving an arrow. But in the end, Family Pack feels too satisfied with itself. It exists in its own small bubble, where there is no room for wild leaps of humor or imagination. The climax is intensely terrible. It ties up the dramatic knot with a family-friendly, PG-rated hokum involving the mother's love. As the characters cry, we, too, shed a tear or two, albeit for different reasons.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times