VAMPIRES SUCK (2010)
Starring Jenn Proske, Matt Lanter, Chris Riggi, Arielle Kebbel, Kelsey Ford, Anneliese van der Pol, Jun Hee Lee, Mike Mayhall, Ken Jeong, Crista Flanagan, Bradley Dodds, Charlie Weber, Matthew Warzel, Diedrich Bader, Nedal Yousef and Jeff Witzke.
Screenplay by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
Distributed by 20th Century Fox. 80 minutes. Rated PG-13.
When you hear a title like Vampires Suck, it can only mean one thing: the two-headed comedy-killing monster known as Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have somehow scammed a movie studio into allowing them to make yet another one of their “parody movies.”
The quotations are used because parodies by definition are supposed to be funny and nothing this poorly made should actually be called a professional movie.
Actually, if you read our interview with actor George Hamilton, this movie’s title is actually a rip-off of the immediately rejected first name for Hamilton’s hit 1979 horror-parody Love at First Bite (which, unlike Vampires Suck, was actually kind of funny!). In fairness, that original designation was Dracula Sucks, to which Hamilton had replied, “Dracula Sucks? That’s a funny idea but I don’t like the title.”
However, Friedberg and Seltzer love the title, which gives you a pretty good reading on their level of humor. Of course, since this movie is a slavish parody of the first two Twilight movies and the granddaddy of all bloodsuckers does not appear, they had to change the name to Vampires Suck.
They don’t suck nearly as much as this movie, though.
Friedberg and Seltzer have slimed the cineplexes with such laugh-free fare as Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans.
If you’ve seen any of these movies before, then you know what to expect – slavish copying of relatively recent movies with enough poop, fart, zit and tit jokes to call it a comedy. Mix in tons of not funny topical references – the newest of which is at least a few months old just because the film has to deal with the bare minimum of editing, scoring and professional filmmaking.
In fairness, in this case the two filmmakers do deserve credit for a certain amount of restraint – they do not throw nearly as many completely unrelated scenes as they normally do into the mix. Plotwise, at least, they mostly stick to the Twilight template.
Still, we are pepper-sprayed with completely superfluous references to Lady Gaga, The Jersey Shore, Lindsay Lohan, Eat Pray Love, Kim Kardashian and Twitter. It's like reading last month’s gossip column.
However, if you really wanted to see a funny version of Twilight, you should probably just go to see Twilight.
More importantly, you should avoid Vampires Suck like a stake through the heart.
Dave Strohler
Copyright ©2010 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 19, 2010.
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