Vampires Suck
For those of you who are not familiar with Friedberg and Seltzer, they are probably the most notorious filmmakers to come along since Uwe Boll. And if you don't know who that is, I implore you to look up Boll's "masterpiece", The House of the Dead. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprises in store. But back to the duo behind Vampires Suck - They do spoof films that are supposed to be in the tradition of movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. They got their big break back in 2000 co-writing Scary Movie, a film that had a large number of fans, but I wasn't one of them. They waited six years to give us their follow up, Date Movie, which was a parody of romantic comedies. It was absolutely terrible, not funny in the slightest, and panned by just about every critic in the nation. But, it made money, so they got to do more films over the years. Their targets have been fantasy films (Epic Movie), the movie 300 (Meet the Spartans), and the summer blockbusters of 2008 (Disaster Movie). Much like Date Movie, they have all been absolutely terrible, not funny in the slightest, and panned by just about every critic in the nation. But, they have all made money.
To call Friedberg and Seltzer filmmakers would be stretching the term to its breaking point. They don't so much parody the films they're targeting, rather they do scene-for-scene remakes, only adding references to pop culture. These are not even actual jokes about pop culture, they're literally just name-dropping whatever teen audiences (the film's main target group) are talking about. In Vampires Suck, for example, they do a recreation of a scene from the first movie, only they have the characters name-drop the TV show Jersey Shore, and have some look-alike actors of the cast of that show just happen to be standing there. That's literally the entire gag right there. It's humor in its laziest form. They can't be bothered to come up with a punchline, or even a build up. They just want us to laugh out of recognition. But, we don't laugh, because there's nothing to laugh at. Just throwing in a reference to a popular TV show or pop culture figure is not funny in itself. If you're going to have Lady Gaga in a scene (or at least a look-alike of her), give her something to do that's funny, instead of just name-dropping her in your dialogue, and having her standing there for a few seconds.
But this is how all of their films work. It doesn't matter if they're taking aim at romantic comedies or the Twilight Saga, the films are generally all the same, and miss the point entirely by not really spoofing the intended target in the first place. This has earned Friedberg and Seltzer a reputation that only very few bad directors have earned in their lifetimes. Of their past five films, three of them have been ranked as amongst the worst films ever made over on the IMDB website. Their movies are cheaply made, and rushed to theaters. How rushed are they? Vampires Suck started shooting back in the spring of this year, and it's already on screens less than five months later. That would be an impressive feat, provided there was anything of value up there on the screen.
I realize I haven't talked much about the film itself. The movie basically mixes the plots of the first two Twilight films, and then does some shot-for-shot remakes of select scenes, only with juvenile humor and pop culture name dropping thrown in. Some of the names have been changed ("Bella" is now called "Becca"), and the movie has been cast based on who most looked like the original actors, not on their actual talent. You get the feeling that Friedberg and Seltzer are more interested in making their film look like the real thing, rather than actually ridiculing it. And when they do attempt it's joke, it usually lands with a deafening thud, such as the running gag concerning Jacob the werewolf resembling a dog each time we see him as the movie goes on, but no one notices.
See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!
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