Rating of
1/4
Sploich Reviews Vampires Suck (2010)
Sploich - wrote on 03/06/11
For a decade now, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have been plaguing our cinemas with the epitome of terrible films. Titles such as Scary Movie and Meet the Spartans have shown us that to some people the word "parody" has Stretch Armstrong-like abilities and can be affiliated with just about anything as long as there is some sort of semblance to a joke or reference that comments on popular culture, movies or television. I could go on for quite some time about all the reasons Seltzer and Friedberg don't seem to understand what is and is not funny, but I've done that enough for their other films over the years and frankly this one doesn't even deserve as much punishment.
Don't get me wrong: This is a terrible movie. Almost every line of dialogue is a reference to a television show or a person in the public eye without actually saying anything funny about said reference. When the characters aren't talking about pop culture, they're showing you something about pop culture or performing senseless, unfunny slapstick that has no bearing on the story or plot. As I've come to expect this from these movies, however, it doesn't phase me like it used to. I used to cringe or get frustrated, but at this point all I can do is sigh. What was most shocking about this film was the fact that it actually get me to genuinely laugh on four separate occasions. This being a comedy, I should not be able to count the specific times at which I was humored, but because it happened more often than with any of their other films I can reluctantly say that this is Seltzer and Friedberg's least worst movie.
What we are making fun of this time is Twilight. We've all been making the same jokes about these books and films since they came out and apparently these two "geniuses" have been writing those jokes down. There are references to other things throughout but the movie stays strictly on the story lines of Twilight and New Moon from start to finish. If you know the films then you already know the stories and if you don't know them I'm not going to explain all of it here and really you don't need to know.
One big difference between this and other recent "parody" movies is that the actors actually seem like they're having fun with their roles. The main characters at least seem to actually be putting effort into making their roles convincingly similar to the source. Either that or even the makers of this film were able to get better performances out of their actors than the makers of the Twilight Saga. The acting as a whole is nothing terrible but also nothing interesting. You can tell that the actors are truly struggling with the lines they have to say. I sort of feel sorry for them before I remember that they had to agree to be in the movie.
This movie's biggest sin is that it is nearly void of emotional provocation. Again, it did get me to laugh a few times, but when I wasn't laughing or sighing, I was yawning. I think they were trying to emulate the pace of the original films and in doing so they made their film just as boring as the originals. I was almost ready for the film to be done when I realized it had only be half an hour. Speaking of which, the credits hit just before an hour and twenty minutes, which goes to show you that they really had nothing to work with when all is said and done.
I'm getting to this point now where I feel that if Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg were to hire some authentically talented comedy writers to help them with their films, they could turn their careers around and no longer be the most hated filmmakers in Hollywood as they currently are. But that will never happen, and I don't expect to see their names being any more highly regarded in the future than they are right now.
