Family Pack (2024)

Like ‘Jumanji’, but in a very trashy way, a perfectly diverse French family (father a teacher and musician with a racialised daughter from a previous marriage, mother a lawyer for battered women with a gender-fluid son also from a previous marriage and a young daughter from this new family/e) is trapped in this role-playing game.

This is a very popular and fun board game if you play with 8 or more people, but I haven't played it too many times because I don't always have so many friends willing to play a few games.

If you have never played ‘Werewolves of Castronegro’ you will hardly recognise the characters, the powers or the rules that are transferred to this new European Netflix production, although at the beginning they explain the rules very briefly.

Werewolves is a board game in which you have to discover who the town's lycanthrope is, in a terrifying twist on the legendary Cluedo.

And of course, on paper, it's an idea with potential, which is why the French have decided to make an adaptation for Netflix, doing their own version of Jumanji with lycanthropes, and with the added bonus of having the great Jean Reno in the cast.

A Jumanji with werewolves, with Jean Reno and which arrives on the eve of Halloween. What can go wrong?

There are so many cons to this family comedy, I don't even know where to begin. For starters, its appealing premise is ruined, because the werewolves come out far less than desired, which is a real shame because it gets the practical effects right, i.e. the fearsome werewolves are not special effects, it's make-up, and when CGI does make an appearance, it doesn't cause embarrassment, so technically, there's little to complain about.

The problem is that the film has opted to be a family comedy, I'll buy the comedy thing, but if you're not funny, I'll leave it at that, and the family thing was not the moment, and if you're going to be, take an example of the classic you plagiarise, in this case the great Jumanji, because that one had a childish touch, but without abandoning the creepiness and creepiness of the whole, in a unique work that has never been repeated, not even with the sequels, and that's why it's a classic.

Jean Reno does what he can with what he's been given, but he makes it clear that he's a luxury supporting actor, a mere lure for the actor's fans, and they have succeeded... And wait, Franck Dubosc plays his son. Either Jean Reno, aged 76, has aged very well, or Franck Dubosc, aged 60, has aged very badly.

It's a pity, because this game lent itself to a much darker film adaptation, full of mystery and deceit and lots of werewolves murdering villagers with large doses of blood and gore.

But no, hardly a drop of blood, with werewolves that look like ‘Furry fandom’ at a fur convention and some horrific transformations (and I don't mean horrific in a good way).