Love Bite (2012)

Sadly Over-hyped

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jessica Szohr is very beautiful. That is a fact. Since I haven't seen the TV show she is in yet, I can't say how she is as an actress or judge her in general based on this movie. It would be unfair, because the rating would not be a good one. But that is down to the character she has to portray, which is not much more than being there looking good and saying a few things.Where the movie really loses, is in its jokes department and character development. Even though they try to be as smart and funny as any other teen sex comedy (with added horror elements), it lacks in many departments. It does pull punches on the sexuality too, when it should at least go and try to walk a like here. It never does, but has all the usual clichés ...

I saw the trailer for this film, and it did look like it could be a funny film, and it was described as being something for The Inbetweeners audience, so I was kind of surprised to see the lowest of low ratings, from director Andy De Emmony (Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!). Basically summer has begun just after school is over for the students in the town of Rainmouth, the dead-end seaside town; some of the students include a group of teenage friends, Jamie (Eragon's Ed Speleers), Kev (Luke Pasqualino), Bruno (Robin Morrissey) and Spike (Daniel Kendrick). Jamie is bored to hell and forced into working for his pothead mother Natalie (Kierston Wareing) at her B&B, while the other guys seem happy working in the pie factory, but they are concentrating more on trying to get sex. Desperate to get out there, and when he gets the chance to every so often, Jamie is out on their nights as well, and at a party he meets beautiful, smart and sexy Juliana (Piranha 3D's Jessica Szohr) from America, but soon after her arrival strange things are happening in the village. This includes many teenagers going missing, and there is rumour of a werewolf in the town, and it is revealed that those missing teens were virgins, and the beast is only hunting for virgin flesh, Sid (Timothy Spall) seems to be the one hunting it. The assumed werewolf hunter is staying at the B&B, and warns Jamie about the werewolf, that he should stay away from Juliana, who Jamie is smitten with, and that he should lose his virginity as soon as possible. For a while he ignores this advice and continues to try and get closer to his new love interest, she does like him very much, but at times seems to try and avoid him for some reason, and eventually he and his friends realise the werewolf threat is true, and that they should pop their cherry quickly to stay safe. Thinking that Juliana may not have any feelings for him, and then later believing Sid's theory that she is the beast, Jamie tries to have sex with the person who has been begging him to shag her, fat and unpleasant Alicia (Rosie Sansom), but he doesn't go ahead with this, and he fails other attempts with some other girls. It turns out the American love interest is not the werewolf, she is in fact a werewolf hunter who provides the service of taking the virginity from people so they will be safe from the danger, but knowing that she has to save lives she cannot give into any feelings she may or may not have for anyone. In the end the werewolf kills Sid who attempts to end the terror, it is cornered and killed by Jamie with a silver spiked arrow, and he finally embraces his feelings with Juliana who is also smitten with him, so he loses his virginity as well with the woman he loves. Also starring Robert Pugh as Sergent Rooney, Imogen Toner as Mandy and Paul Birchard as Reverend Lynch. I agree with the critics that the first half of the film is pretty dreadful with the immature and crude material, a few scenes in the second half has the more material that could have made the film worthwhile, the concept was good sounding, it's just the execution, there wasn't much that made me laugh, and it was not thrilling either, it is a disappointingly terrible British comedy horror. Pretty poor!

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. (So much so that I have now seen it twice.) True there is quite a lot of all the (crude) stuff that other reviewers have mentioned, but there is also a story line that holds together remarkably well for a film about werewolves. In the course of the film suspicion falls on various characters as to which one is actually becoming the werewolf at the time of the full moon. I felt at times I was watching a murder who-done-it. By the end of the film all the earlier 'loose ends' are tied up in a satisfying way that makes logical sense of the script. The film's characters are, to a greater or lesser extent, larger than life (if not downright quirky) - but no more so than might be reasonably expected in a film of comic fantasy. All in all I found this to be a very original story. It was well paced and kept me interested from start to finish. The seaside setting was also refreshing and occasionally provided a picturesque backdrop. In my opinion Love Bite is well worth seeing (at least once). 6/10.

I went in with low expectations based on the trailers, but I had no idea it could be this bad. At the least I expected some cheeky British-style jokes. Instead it's just the same joke over and over: Sex.Just in case you're wondering; yes, all the "best" jokes are crammed into the trailer. Sandwiched in between those 4 or 5 decent jokes is an hour and twenty minutes of crude, unintelligent British cinema.The basic plot outline is that four young lads in a seaside town are trying to have sex. That comprises of 70% of the film. The other 20% and 10% is one of said lads trying to start a romance with a free-spirited American and some nonsense about werewolves, respectively. This film is more about sex and contrived romance than it is about werewolves. There's some scrambling around for several of these lads to lose their virginity, either because they feel inadequate or because it will prevent them from being eaten by a werewolf.Most of the characters are walking punchlines to dirty jokes; all of them are defined by their libido and sexual activities. We have an incompetent manager whose son runs her business whilst she has casual sex, there's the porky foul-mouthed lass who's desperate for (huge shock) sex, and there's the self-proclaimed alpha male and only non- virgin (that's important apparently) in the group of lads who, I swear, is the most punchable character I've ever seen in UK film or TV on account of his mind-numbing accent and the fact that he's given an over- abundance of lines to showcase it. And yes, those lines are all about sex.I could go on forever about how unpleasant the film is, but I think that's already clear. I'll try and point out a few positives, where I can:The portrayal of British teenagers is, for better or worse, spot on. Exaggerated for cinema, yes, but the crudeness and stupidity of the characters is something observable in today's culture.The romance plot between two of the characters is an "OK" one when compared to other elements of the film. In a more coherent film it would pass for mediocre, though still contrived.The ending did make me laugh. For a second it almost looked like the ending to a much better comedy. It's a good punchline to an otherwise ugly, drawn-out joke.In conclusion: This film makes trash like American Pie look dignified and intricate. As a comedy it's too crude to be witty even as a mirror to modern British youth culture, and as a horror it's thoroughly unimpressive and melds clumsily with the teenagers-in-British-seaside- town setting. There is nothing redeemable here. Avoid.