Like the over-coiffed bonce of Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson, a broad send-up of Stephanie Meyer's teen-vampire romance juggernaut should be pretty hard to mess up. But the writing-directing team of Aaron Setlzer and Jason Friedberg give it the old college try with Vampires Suck, their woefully laugh-free pastiche of slapstick and mimicry based upon the Bella/Edward/Jacob saga.
Where the over-confident production team save themselves and their film from Plan 9 from Outer Space-style infamy is that there is a carefree 'something’ about Vampires Suck that makes it all vaguely likeable. Not witty, or clever or especially funny. Just likeable.
Whatever manages to hold one’s interest over a thankfully short 82 minutes, it is not the material that the duo provides for themselves in their script. It relies far too heavily on Stooge-esque pratfalls and physical violence in striving for on-target laughs. Once too often characters get punched, poked, flung and/or stabbed; jokes involving wheelchair-bound Native Americans, sex dolls and already-dated pop culture references (Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan, The Jersey Shore cast, to name just a tiresome few) arrive with a deafening thud.
Where Seltzer and Friedberg earn their money (and the 2-star rating) is in the casting. As the Bella Swann-inspired character Becca, Jenn Proske nails a perfectly mopey impersonation of Kirsten Stewart, complete with gaspy, twitchy line-readings and the increasingly hilarious over-reliance on pushing her hair off her face. Matt Lanter as Edward (whose surname morphs from Cullen to Sullen, a stroke of creativity which represents a highpoint in the film) and Christopher N. Riggi as were-hunk Jacob make the most of their parts. Best of all is old-pro Diedrich Bader as Bella's out-of-touch, sexually-frustrated father, Sheriff Crane.
It will help in your enjoyment.... wrong word... acceptance of the film if you know the intricacies of the Twilight trilogy, as much of what Seltzer and Friedberg bring to their mock-up is simply uninspired mimicry. They seem to believe that just recreating familiar scenes with different actors will automatically make them funny; it doesn't. Vampires Suck exists in a mirthless void somewhere between the satiric lunacy of the genre standard-bearer, the Abraham/Zucker classic Flying High (1980), and the frustratingly uneven Scary Movie series, possessing none of the former's superb timing nor the latter's machine-gun delivery of hit/miss gags.
Though ever-so slightly better than the abysmal past efforts from the Seltzer/Friedberg stable (Date Movie, 2006; Epic Movie, 2007; Meet The Spartans, 2008; Disaster Movie, 2008), the greatest achievement of Vampires Suck is an entirely unintentional one – in condensing the key story elements of the three Twilight films into less than 90 minutes, it pinpoints what bloated melodramas Meyers' films really are.
