YMMV / An American Werewolf in Paris

• Complete Monster: Claude is the leader of a werewolf society in Paris and the owner of Club de la Lune. Using his club to lure in tourists and thrill seekers, Claude has them locked in when he and his men transform, killing the humans. It was at such a party Andy McDermott gets bitten and his friend Brad gets killed. When Claude tries to recruit Andy, he tries to have him kill his friend Chris as an initiation. He also explains his belief that werewolves are superior to humans and his disdain of hospitals and charities for empowering the weak. It is also revealed he turned himself into a werewolf by stealing the blood of the benevolent werewolf Serafine. When he learns that Serafine's scientist stepfather made a botched cure for lycanthropy, which causes immediate transformations, Claude kills him and raids his lab, so he can distribute the drug in his club and transform whenever he wants to kill innocent people.
• Jerkass Woobie: Poor Amy. All she wanted to do was have a one night stand, but instead she is not only brutally murdered by a werewolf, she has to live on as a tormented ghost. She is incredibly bitter about it, is open about her hatred for Andy, and does what little she can to get him killed out of revenge. But it's all completely understandable; he did kill her violently, left her ghost in a horribly mangled state where her eyeball at one point pops out, and his death is the only thing needed to let her pass on.
• Narm Charm: In the climax, the shot of Chris running out of the club with a giant cross on his back. In slow motion.
• Sequelitis: It's generally seen as vastly inferior to its predecessor, in part due to the Lighter and Softer tone, clumsy attempts at raising the stakes, and disappointing transformation scenes that relied on ill-conceived CG rather than practical effects.
• Special Effects Failure: Computer-generated animation was still a relatively new technique in 1997, and many viewers felt that the CG— used not only for the transformation scenes, but for all but a handful of shots of the werewolves— was too obvious in this movie. The closeups using puppets aren't much better, being only used in quick cuts to hide their artificiality and for being a poor match to the CGI wolves.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The whole subplot with Amy becoming a Vengeful Ghost is mainly Played for Laughs, but could have been really disturbing. Andy has not only murdered someone, but condemned her to a state of endless suffering, even if it wasn't entirely his fault. Furthermore, while she's freed after he kills Claude and gets better, He has no way of knowing that would even work.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Julie Delpy. This review adds that her too-good-for-such-a-shlocky-movie performance "isn't necessarily a good thing, since it prevents us from relaxing and enjoying An American Werewolf in Paris as a completely mindless, campy entertainment experience." Delpy's later interviews would reveal that she gave such a good performance despite taking on the film purely for the cash, and disliking the experience so much that she avoided doing any other commercial Hollywood movies.

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