Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Cirque du Freak-The Vampire’s Assistant is based on series of books by Darren Shah. It is not the atypical vampire film with bloodshed; instead it will leave you untouched and unmoved with Crepsley (John C. Reilly) as the lead vampire.
Directed by Paul Weitz the plot of the movie is essentially a high-school young boy Darren played by Chris Massoglia with some uncanny obsession for spiders have wandered his way into a weird circus that takes place in the abandoned theater of the town with his friend Steven played by Josh Hutcherson. Both these boys get fascinated with the vampire magician of the show Larten Crepsley.
What happens then is that both these boys get transformed into vampires-one as a friendly vampire and the other as the evil one. Both the friends stand in the opposite sides of the war of vampires. Good vampires do not kill when people dine while the evil ones don’t need to kill but they do as vampires cannot get themselves rid of century-old habits. These two factions of the vampire empire labored to provide with a moral for the film.
The film has been envisioned with the good thought of painting a lighter side of the vampire with elements of fun and humor. However, critics pointed out that the film has failed to realize the main subject. The film did not turn out to be neither funny nor scary. This movie failed to move with pace and nothing seemed happening.
Besides the good and the bad vampires, in the film you will see a bearded lady portrayed by Salma Hayek, a wolf man, a dwarf and even a snake boy who wants to be a rock star. But nothing seemed to generate anything beyond a chuckle or two. What are appreciable in this movie are its special effects. Otherwise it has poor editing, the sequence of events reflect total disconnect as audience will fail to relate the characters and subjects in space and time.
John C. Reilly in Cirque du Freak?: The Vampire's Assistant
Some characters seemed unnecessarily inducted in the film such as the giant named Mr. Tiny. This giant expressed gay affectations for no rhyme or reason. The film is more cluttered with plots, subplots and characters.
The performance of Josh Hutcherson as a villain is praiseworthy and that is quite appreciated by the audience. On the other hand Willem Dafoe is under used by the director. Whatever little was his screen presence, he was liked and appreciated. Again, John C Reilly does whatever he could with the script as there was nothing much in it for him. People could hardly laugh and its time that directors get into some real drama and not these kinds of low graded crap script lines.
This film is presented by Universal and they must have thought it to be a curtain raiser for the long series such as Harry Potter. But hope this illusion gets broken as it has no charm, nor enough humor to continue it.
My suggestion is wait to see this movie at home in pay channels; still better free rather than wasting time and money at the theaters.
| Film | Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant |
|---|---|
| Cast | John C. Reilly as Larten Crepsley Josh Hutcherson as Steve Chris Massoglia as Darren Shan Jessica Carlson as Rebecca Michael Cerveris as Mr. Tiny Ray Stevenson as Murlaugh Patrick Fugit as Evra the Snake Boy Daniel Newman as Pete Morgan Saylor as Annie Don McManus as Mr. Shan Colleen Camp as Mrs. Shan Ken Watanabe as Mr. Tall Salma Hayek as Madame Truska |
| Director | Paul Weitz |
| Writers | Paul Weitz Brian Helgeland |
| Producers | Kerry Kohansky Dan Kolsrud Ewan Leslie Rodney Liber Andrew Miano Courtney Pledger Sarah Radclyffe Lauren Shuler Donner John Swallow |
| Runtime | 1 Hour 39 Minutes |
| Rating | 3/5 |
Posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 4:48 pm