George Clooney and Brad Pitt made a public stink when Apple shifted the release of their movie “Wolfs,” for which they were paid tens of millions to make, from theatrical to streaming. “It is a bummer,” Clooney moaned at the Venice Film Festival when asked about his paycheck, er, sorry, his movie. Really, the pair should send Apple CEO Tim Cook an Edible Arrangement for saving them the embarrassment of what would have been a giant flop.
“Wolfs,” a so-called comedy written and directed by Jon Watts in which Clooney and Pitt play rival New York fixers tasked with discreetly disposing of a dead body, is a dreadful, laugh-free slog that tests the limits of what star power alone can salvage. The A-list presence of Brad and George cannot mask the elementary school dialogue they utter, the jumbled tone and Dollar Store aesthetic. In fact, their attachment to this compost only exacerbates its many, many problems.
The boldface names suggest a certain level of quality — or, at the very least, competence — that this movie does not meet. Maybe I’d be more forgiving if this buddy-cop retread starred Stephen and Billy Baldwin. Alas.
As it stands, woeful “Wolfs” won’t make you howl so much as huff and puff. Watts’ 108-minute yawn begins with a woman’s scream. That’s Margaret (Amy Ryan), and she has just encountered a naked, dead body in a luxury hotel suite.
Covered in the young man’s blood, Marge lowers the blinds and shakily picks up her iPhone. Apple, tryi.