Friday, August 20, 2010

Vampires Suck Review

Since the book release in 2005, Twilight has had a polarizing effect on the general public despite spending over 91 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. The first film debuted in 2008 in sold out theaters and grossed over $392 million worldwide. But not everyone bought into the craze. So considering the phenomenal success of the Twilight franchise, it is amazing it has taken the writing team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg this long to lampoon the vampire trilogy for the sake of those who dislike the glittery image of Edward. What recent film series is riper for the ribbing?
Jenn Proske plays the brooding and angst-ridden Becca Crane with the same stammering, incomplete sentences and constant hair tucking that the Belle Swan character has become known for. The other cast members, Matt Lanter as Edward Sullen, Diedrich Bader as Becca’s father Frank and Chris Riggi as the shirt-sluffing Jacob, recreate their more famous counterparts with a certain amount of comedic precision. And the script doesn’t miss the opportunity to poke fun at some of the more unexplainable points of the original story. Why, in fact, does the morose new girl at school attract so much attention from not one but two boys?
Unfortunately the scriptwriters, best known for the crass humor in Date Movie, Scary Movie, Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans, let the real possibilities of this parody slip through their fingers. Rather than penning an original storyline that could stand on its own while taking jabs at the series, they randomly pluck lines and scenes from the trilogy and slap them together with excessive, farcical violence. The scenes portray characters being beheaded, impaled with a pitchfork, hit with a shovel and pierced in the head with a spiked bat. Unending crude sexual innuendos and comments are also included, along with some male buttock nudity and inappropriate comments from a father to his daughter.
Using up all their good gags and one-liners in the first 40 minutes, the plot lags during the final act as Becca strives to stop Edward from exposing himself (literally) to the evil leaders of the vampire underground (Mike Mayhall, Ken Jeong, Bradley Dodds) and the entire crowd at her high school prom. But by that point in the movie, any reason to engage in this overwrought attempt to mock the undead has long been sucked dry.

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