Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_du_Freak:_The_Vampire's_Assistant
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450405/
What I Knew About This Movie Ahead of Time:
Initially nothing, but as the download neared 100% my curiosity got the better of me and I looked it up on wikipedia and rotten tomatoes. I learned that John C. Riley, Ken Wantanabe, and Salma Hayek are in it and it is based on a series of young adult fiction novels I have never heard of. It also got middling reviews on RT but i didnt look too deeply, wanting to keep myself more in the dark.
What I Expected:
Based on the title alone, I kind of anticipated a Horrorfest title with maybe a juggalo slant. I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or relieved that a more educated me later began to expect Twilight For Boys.
What I Got:
"Darren, I let you drink my blood. Sure, you can kiss me."
The first 20 minutes of the movie are Quality. Starts off totally Dead Like Me, takes a turn directly for Goosebumps, and ends up in a very satisfying, if unimaginative, freakshow scene. The movie could have comfortably stretched that scene out for another hour and I for one would have walked away happy. But it doesn't.
So, Darren is dead and he is playing snake on his T-Mobile phone and also he is at his own funeral in a casket. Flashback to a few days earlier, Darren is a cool, popular, normal kid. His secret best friend, Steve, is, in classic Apatow terms, a freak. Darren's got a great background, stable loving family, perfect grades, wears khaki pants literally all the time. Steve, on the other hand, never met his father, his mother is an abusive drunk, he gets in more fights than he does pass tests, and is on the fast track to failure. The scenes where we meet Darren and Steve are sincerely funny. They crib heavily from similar work, but thats not a bad thing with execution like this. Then, like I said before, it gets Goosebumpy.
Darren is obsessed with spiders, Steve is obsessed with vampires. A creepy limousine gives them a flyer to an illegal art exhibit/show called "Cirque du Freak." They go. It is a freakshow. It is legitimately entertaining and like I said, I would rather watch Ken Wantanabe (a giant), Salma Hayek (a bearded woman), Orlando Jones (a man with no abdomen), Kristen Schaal (not really sure what her thing was), John C. Riley (an undead magician with a spider fetish), et al, do freaky cg things for an hour in front of a small, horrified crowd than the actual next hour.
The boys' math teacher shows up with the cops and shuts the freakshow down on moral grounds, but it turns out that the liberal feel good "normal" people who want to "save" the freaks from exploitation hate the freaks more than those that paid to see them. Typical "normals" imo. Darren wants to take a closer look at John C. Riley's spider, so he hides in his closet as Riley and Wilem Defoe (!!!) have a conversation about vampires, vampinese, and being the last of the mofreakins. Willem Defoe saying "We're the last of the Mofreakins" is probably the highest post-freakshow moment of the film. Its just one long, dry, motivationless spiral from there as we are sucked in to the most boring intrigue this side of the West Wing.
Vampires and Vampinese were at war, but John C. Riley and Willem Defoe managed to beat the Vampinese into accepting a truce eighty years ago. Some fat bald guy called Mr. Tiny wants to restart the war to bring to pass the end of the world. Darren, in the closet, is about as confused as I was. Not sure if that's a good sign or not. Steve busts into the room and reveals that he knows John C. Riley's secret. John C. Riley says Steve has Bad Blood, tries to be threatening (that doesnt really work because he's Dr. Steve Brule), and chases Steve out of the room. Darren narrowly escapes, is kidnapped by Mr. Tiny, and arrives safely at home.
The next day at school, Steve gets bit by Riley's kidnapped spider and goes into a coma. Darren sacrifices his immortal soul to save his Secret Best Friend. Darren is a vampire under the thrall of John C. Riley, but Riley seems more interested in making Darren do housework. I'm still not really sure why Darren had to become a vampire to save Steve and do vampiric laundry, they're never clear on the reasons and because of this the rest of the movie feels entirely arbitrary. I know its supposed to convey a kind of "innocent kid gets sucked into an ancient war against his will" Buffy thing, but there is literally no motivation for any of the characters to do anything from now to the end of the movie.
Darren fakes his death, joins the Cirque du Freak, makes some friends, including monkey girl Rebecca, and insists that he's not a freak even though he's a vampire. Yeah, right, Darren. Steve figures out that Darren is not all-the-way dead and vows to have his revenge. Because Steve wanted to be a vampire. But Darren became a vampire to save Steve from I don't even know becoming Spider-man I guess. So Steve is pissed. Steve gets turned into a vampire by the vampinese. The key difference between the vampires and the vampinese is that the vampinese love killing dudes, but the vampires sort of regret it and after hundreds of years figured out how to drink blood non-lethally. Steve loves killing dudes and draining their blood. Darren doesn't. In fact, Darren is a vegetarian.
Eventually, Mr. Tiny's vampinese goons raid the Cirque and kidnap the monkey girl. Meanwhile, Steve kidnaps Darren's family. They have a showdown. John C. Riley fights Steve's vampinese mentor. Darren fights Steve, but realizes that being a vegetarian vampire makes you weak. Not enough iron in your diet. He gets trounced by Steve but eventually takes a sip from his monkey girlfriend and is now evenly matched with his bloodthirsty best friend. Its all pretty formulaic. Finally, John C. Riley spills the first blood in the new vampire/vampinese war, Steve joins Mr. Tiny once and for all because its his "destiny" or something, and Darren has to prepare for the coming war. He kisses Rebecca and all is well. Darren is now a Freak.
How I Felt:
This movie is schizophrenic. I'm not sure who it's supposed to be targeting and I don't think it knows, either. It jumps around from fairly campy, funny horror for kids to self-serious vampire politics to completely forgettable, wacky fantasy slapstick. Also it swears a lot. It is PG-13, but, being based on Young Adult Fiction, I figured it would be a little more family-friendly. I really couldn't seem to lock down a demographic though. It seems that most of it is targeted directly at 12 year old boys who want a movie about being a kick-ass vampire who kicks vampire ass that he can watch when his 14 year old sister is having a Twilight party in the basement, but the first 20 minutes fly entirely in the face of that. I'll admit that I laughed out loud at the part in the beginning when Darren's dad is explaining to him what the meaning of life is and it's scenes like that that make the rest of the film so disappointing. But luckily John C. Riley is funny, and there are enough jokes scattered throughout to stop it from being a total wash. The soundtrack is also pretty solid and there is some heavily implied incest if you look at the vampires as Anne Rice vamps, so that's a plus.
The movie would have vastly improved if it either took itself more seriously or not seriously at all. You've got set-ups without punchlines and punchlines set up by twenty minutes of droll "freakiness." The first 20 minutes are seriously great though and drew me in enough to want to finish the film.
My Viewing Recommendation:
Empty Saturday afternoon with people who have a fairly boring sense of humor, refuse to watch R-rated films, and wont walk out if Darren says "shit" a bunch or people who don't mind an hour and twenty minutes of tedium in exchange for twenty minutes of silly but compelling entertainment.
Would I Watch A Sequel:
Yes, as long as John C. Riley and Willem Defoe are involved and there's a Nick Cave song I want to listen to in it. I would sure hope it follows the first twenty minutes of The Vampire's Assistant though.