Why You Didn’t Like … Wolfs 

I’m not even angry. I’m just … disappointed.

There’s a style of humour called ‘mean-spirited’ or ‘abrasive’ comedy. Mean-spirited humour relies on insults and antagonism instead of wit or actual jokes. It’s the ugly cousin of cringe. Both make you uncomfortable, but where cringe at least has awkwardness, mean-spirited just settles for laziness.

Verbal Wallpaper

See, the main problem with Wolfs is that it’s about 90 minutes of Clooney and Pitt saying ‘fuck you’ to each other. They antagonising each other, not very artfully, and just when you expect the third act to show just how clever they are, it becomes a standard shootout. Guns replace the clever dialogue we’d yearned for over an hour and a half for and never actually got.

I’m not afraid of the words ‘fuck’ or ‘you’. But like any words, they should do something. By the time they hit the 37th ‘fuck you’, it’s just white noise—filler dialogue that’s a stand-in for real writing. It’s verbal wallpaper: instead of actual banter, we get a string of flaccid insults, the cinematic equivalent of covering over mouldy walls.

For an action comedy, there’s surprisingly little comedy.

Team Spirit

We know Clooney and Pitt have chemistry. They’re great in Ocean’s Eleven. But in Wolfs, their constant sniping just wears you down—by the third act, you’re ready for them to walk away and take the rest of the movie with them. The bonding happens way too late to matter, and by then, we just don’t care.

The issue is that neither Clooney nor Pitt’s characters are likeable. Their constant sniping is sandpaper to your brain; you just want them to take their own advice and fuck off. Rather than a movie where two guys become bros, coming together to cleverly solve a problem, we’re left with two people we wish we’d never met, and couldn’t care less about by the time the credits roll.

Somehow, the writers took the killer combo of Clooney and Pitt and turned it into drunk dads arguing at a BBQ.

The Problem with Mean-Spirited Comedy

Aside from not being funny? Abrasive comedy relies on characters being nasty or hostile instead of creating genuine humour. There are many bodies at the bottom of the lake where writers and directors have tried to make hostile characters funny … and failed.

You can get away with it when it’s done well. Deadpool does it with flair, for example between Wade and Colossus, because there’s more than just insults. There’s slapstick, irony, and layers to the comedy. In Wolfs, there’s no irony. No layers. All we got was two grumpy old men hurling insults at each other.

The Emptiness Inside

You sat down for an action-comedy, and you got 90 minutes of Clooney and Pitt saying ‘fuck you’ on repeat. You’d be forgiven for feeling empty inside.

I’m a bit puzzled. We know Clooney and Pitt as masters of their craft. Hell, we’ve seen them in Ocean’s Eleven. That uses swearing, but sparingly and effectively. It has good character moments from a much broader cast; arguably a more difficult feat than when you’ve got so much time for just two characters. 

But Wolfs also fails because it’s … unrealistic. Bear with me. At the start of the movie we get Clooney cleaning a crime scene, and Pitt arrives to do the same. But then, we get to watch Clooney’s character do all the work while Pitt’s character sits back and has a Coke. It’s an early sign that something’s off. Pitt’s character just checks out, and honestly, so do we. See, there’s no way a top-notch cleaner would just let that slide, and yet it’s barely reused as a gag, except for a weak callback later. It’s like the film’s not even trying. There’s nothing about the setup that works, unless the goal was to make audiences uncomfortable and bored.

In Ocean’s Eleven, the swearing is sparring, used to punch up witty banter or character moments. In Wolfs, it’s like watching two guys stuck in traffic, yelling ‘fuck you’ at each other. Honestly, the 1978 video game Simon had more variety.

So, What?

Wolfs doesn’t work because it mistakes swearing for humour and antagonism for banter. It leaves audiences unsatisfied on the promise of another Clooney-Pitt outing. 

Wolfs isn’t an action-comedy. It’s a verbal boxing match with no punches landing. Next time they should remember: dialogue’s more than just a collection of fucks. And we deserve better.