Wolf

Jack Nicholson as a werewolf. You can just see some Gucci-loving, Tinsel Town type pitching this concept during a power lunch: "Yeah, it can work. We just paste some whiskers on his cheeks and have him leer at the camera. For good measure, we'll throw in one of those cute actresses from the Batman movies. Get the nice one. Not the arrogant, blonde Mrs. You-Know-Who. And by the way, could it be a love story?"

Don't laugh too hard; this one got way past the concept stage. That's pretty much the plot of Wolf, the horror movie in which Nicholson introduces Michelle Pfeifier to a new form of heavy pet­ting. In truth, Wolf is nowhere near as bad as it could be. But when com­pared to the lupine classics of modern cine­ma, Wolf is missing a fang or two. It doesn't have the dark wit of The Howling, the awe­some special effects of An American Werewolf in London or the sheer visionary brilliance of Wolfen (if you haven't seen it, go now to the nearest video store).

So what does Wolf have? Well, it has a plot that plays like a bad mix of John Cheever and Shirley Jackson (translation for the literary challenged: late Woody Allen and early Stephen King). It also has a few good jokes, several decent jolts — and a very bad performance by Nicholson.

He plays an aging editor for a distin­guished publishing house that's in the process of being consumed by a rapacious global media lord (Christopher Plummer). Nicholson is a highly respected, but gener­ally weak and toothless, wordsmith who's saddled with a distant wife (Kate Nelligan), a double-dealing protege (James Spader), a potential reassignment to Eastern Europe and a rather nasty bite from a pack of wolves in Vermont. In other words, the typical problems of the editing trade.

But the wolf bite is starting to effect him in strange ways (naturally). His sagging libido hits the roof. His senses grow inde­scribably acute, and he develops an insa­tiable appetite for red meat. Unfortunately, he also begins to sport a scraggly beard, as Wolf coughs up the worst make-up job of the century. Nicholson looks less like a werewolf than an over-the-hill beatnik on a drunken pub crawl.

But none of this deters Pfeiffer from becoming smitten with ol' Jack — she likes her men with bite. There's just a slight problem: she's Plummer's daughter, and daddy is out to can Nicholson's hide. (For once, I side with Plummer. Considering the way Nicholson mugs his way through this movie, he ought to be fired.)

The first stretch of Wolf is promising, even good at times. Director Mike Nichols is obviously comfortable with the New York book industry chit-chat and inside references that compose the best scenes in the movie. He's also obviously bored to tears with the werewolf stuff. So why the heck make this movie?

The answer is simple. Nichols is desperate for a commercial hit. But to earn it, he may need something stronger than this limping beast.