Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

The last movie I saw from director Paul Weitz, who was behind ‘About a Boy’ which I hold up as one the most underrated movies of all time, was ‘The Golden Compass’. Personally I liked ‘The Golden Compass’, though I didn’t care for its cliffhanger type ending, but there are some similarities to that movie and the latest movie that Weitz has directed, that being this movie ‘Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant’. Both ‘Compass’ and ‘Freak’ are based on popular novels, neither movie enjoyed much critical success, the majority of people who have read and enjoyed both novels generally abhor both of Weitz’s movie presentations of these novels and both movies are setup in a way to be franchises. Unfortunately it seems both movies are box office failures. How can a movie that made almost 400 million bucks worldwide, that being ‘The Golden Compass’, be considered a flop is beyond me, but that’s what I’m told. Newline Cinema claims that the reason there will not be ‘Golden Compass’ sequel is due to pressure from the Catholic Church. Whatever. Now I’m genuinely upset that there will not be a sequel to ‘The Golden Compass’. However After watching ‘The Vampire’s Assistant’ and assuming the sequels would’ve gone the way of that this movie traveled, I’m not all that upset about this potential franchises probable death right here and right now.

Darren (Chris Massoglia) is good kid with solid parents and bright future. His boy Steve (Josh Hutcherson) is none of that and often gets the well behaved Darren in all kinds of trouble. Like when the freaky limo drops a flyer out the window advertising for a freak show playing in this sleepy suburban town with Darren saying he can’t go but Steve roping him in anyway. And what glorious freaks there are at this show, in particular the charismatic Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly). What makes Larten so intriguing to both boys is that he has a poisonous pet spider which holds all kinds of wonder for Darren considering he’s obsessed with spiders, and also Larten is a vampire. This isn’t something he advertises but Steve happens to be obsessed with vampires in the way Darren is obsessed with spiders and thus Steve recognizes Larten almost immediately for what he really is.

Some things transpire which leads Darren to trade his half his humanity to Larten in an effort to save Steve’s life and thus Darren becomes, as the title suggests, The Vampire’s Assistant. However Larten didn’t do this seemingly callous thing to Darren simply because he needs a daywalking errand boy as it seems he is trying to protect him from something. Apparently there are warring factions of bloodsuckers, the more benevolent vampires of which Larten is a part of and the murderous Vampenese which is led by the scurrilous Murlaugh (Ray Stevenson). The Mysterious Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris) wishes to see the tenuous truce shattered between these sets of vamps for whatever reason and the keys to making this happen lies in the hands of both Darren and Steve in some way.

Eventually all of this will lead to a fair maiden in distress, a battle between good vampire and bad vampire and more importantly boys who were once best friends having to choose sides that are diametrically opposed to each other with the underlying message being it’s not who you eat, but who you are. Or something like that. I can’t remember.

In theory all of this stuff sounds really, really cool. The imagery is striking, the sound design is phenomenal and then add a supporting class that includes the likes of Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek as a bearded lady… hottest bearded lady ever… that chick from ’30 Rock’, Orlando Jones and Ray Stevenson who has been stellar in everything I’ve seen him in, including this, and it would appear that this is a movie that should work. But as I’m sitting in the theater watching this movie I’m really not getting involved in this movie and I’m sitting there trying to figure why this is the case. Apparently there are like twelve of these books written by Darren Shan for the tweener crowd and this movie, we are told, is the first three of these novels crammed into this one movie. I use the word ‘crammed’ because there are so many characters and so many situations and so much stuff going on that the narrative really makes it difficult to lock in on anything. This is about as busy a hundred or so minute movie that you will ever see, yet it still couldn’t keep my mind from floating away on occasion, despite all the stimuli flashing in front of my eyes.

A lot of the narrative gaps felt as if the filmmakers, on one hand, planned to fill in some of these empty spots with the planned forthcoming movies, but on the other hand stuffed as much stuff in the movie as time would allow, on the chance there wouldn’t be another movie. Neither approach seemed to work all that well and led to a movie that was, at least in my opinion, a disjointed unconnected mess.

I am pleased to see that the filmmakers used actual age appropriate kids for the leads as opposed to youthful looking thirty year olds, and while star Chris Massoglia is a good looking kid he’s not a very charismatic one, or probably more accurately they didn’t give him enough to do bring out the natural charm that I’m sure the boy possesses. Like most of the movie he was poorly developed and sectioned off and as such easily forgotten.

I’m fairly certain that if Universal were to greenlight a sequel it would no doubt be better than this movie but we’re not going to hold our breath on that happening. The potential was there for ‘The Vampire’s Assistant’ but it just wasn’t realized