My first taste of the parody films was from the Wayans Brothers. Now their older stuff was hilarious, the hood movie parody Don't Be a Menace to South Central while drinking your Juice in da Hood, Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2 were all hilarious. Later the Scary Movie franchise was taken over by the folks behind the older parody films such as Airplane and The Naked Gun series, now these were chuckle worthy but not nearly as funny. But now Scary Movie has evaporated into nothing and a slew of movies that anyone with the slightest shred of taste in films could see from the promotion is terrible. I am talking about the films of writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who have made such films as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, and, very recently, Vampires Suck. These are young, aspiring filmmakers who watched the Wayans Brothers' films and said to themselves "Huh? I don't get it. I bet no one else will either. Let's make some movies that we understand." Unfortunately, the above filmography was the outcome of that decision.
Now these films have been bashed by almost every critic, major or otherwise, but I don't need them to tell me. No, I can find out these films are shit by way of two fundamental things: the trailers that give away just about every possible joke (lame as they are) and the reactions the people at my school have had to them (because most people at my school have very little taste in such things). Come on, Meet the Spartans? I could understand it if the trailers showed all of the jokes if the jokes had meaning, were intelligent, or were just, you know, good. But the jokes I see in these things seem to come out of nowhere (and they apparently do in the trailer), are parodies of other things instead of what the film claims to be parodying, or are just really lame. Take that joke about the "James gang" being the Black Eyed Peas in Vampires Suck. It doesn't make sense! Yes because The Black Eyed Peas consisted of three people, one black and two white. Only an idiot would actually make a joke like about the Twilight villians looking like The Black Eyed Peas. I believe that the critics at Spill.com said it right when they said the jokes made in the movie are jokes that could have been conceived by the fans of Twilight.
This begs another question. I go to school with many young ladies and older women who are immensely fond of Twilight and they all want to see this movie that mocks and parodies it, yet these same fans berate and are offended by the people who mock it on an every day basis. So it's not okay when someone with some taste mocks it, but when shitty filmmakers with no taste do it it's dandy? Hypocrisy anyone? Just shows how freaking weird some (hear me, SOME) Twilight fans are.
Anyway, the guys at Spill are right: I think audiences appreciate jokes more if they have to use their heads to get the jokes. I can also tell that the Spill crew is right when they say that the absolute majority of the jokes in Vampires Suck are just references to other things/"hey look at that, it's funny because it exists." That's not comedy! The rest I'm told is, as I predicted, "comedy" that consists of jokes that haven't been funny in years (prat falls, being hit over the head, flatulence, there's probably even a few animal reaction shots). I really don't see the point of this movie. Why watch inconceivably famous people make lame jokes about Twilight when millions of regular people can make good jokes about Twilight. Vampires Suck, if anything, only adds to Twilight's ever growing popularity. I'm getting the feeling the series is even starting to overshadow the work of Anne Rice or, dare I say it, Bram Stoker.
None of this changes anything. I don't heed the call of Twilight fans who urge me to read the series one because the only fans I trust are a few friends (most of whom think Vampires Suck looks hilarious) and my brother (because Twilight may be the only book he has read for himself). The only vampire book I plan to read anytime soon (which is probably way off still) is Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. Why? Because my dad (who knows his books) said it was the best vampire book he's ever read, and my dad's word means a lot more than the word of the Twihards', many of whom are people who can't imagine why I wouldn't read Twilight yet scoff when I suggest to them The Dark Tower. I'm sure one day I will pick up each Twilight book and read them dilligently and set them down and realize that I was a fool all along but for now I'm sticking with what I know is good.
Anyway, yeah, Vampires Sucks looks awful and you won't convince me otherwise. I recommend you have your children watch good movies and good literature at very young ages, graphic or not, because they will develop good taste and therefore sense and gravitate away from the bad shit.
This has been some intuition from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.
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