Vampire's Assistant Doesn't Suck

New in theaters this week is the elephantinically titled Cirque du Freak: the Vampire's Assistant, based on a rather lengthyseries of young adult books and featuring typical teenager Darren Shan and his bad boy friend Steve, who's heavily into horror comics.  Steve and Darren venture out one night to the Cirque du Freak, a traveling freak show hidden in a back alley hosted by Ken Watanabe with a really weird head and a featuring a midget, a werewolf, John C. Reilly as Mr. Crepsley, whose act features an oddly iridescent trained spider, Salma Hayek as a future-telling bearded lady and others.  After the show finishes, Steve goes backstage to confront Mr Crepsley of being a vampire (based on a picture in a book of vampire lore) and wants desperately to become one, but Crepsley says he has "bad blood."  Unbeknownst to both Steve & Crepsley, Darren, who is fascinated with spiders, has witnessed their confrontation while stealing Crepsley's spider.  I don't want to give away much more of the plot than that, other than the obvious, which is that Darren grudgingly becomes the Vampire's Assistant of the title.  It should be noted that vampires here do not kill people, but do need to feed on blood, while the related "vampaneze" are quite evil, and regularly feed on humans.  This is a film that knowingly harkens back to teen horror films of the 80's likeMonster Squad,My Best Friend is a Vampire, and evenFright Night while also owing a lot to the Potter series and Todd Browning'sFreaks.  It's nothing earth shattering, but it's fun and goofy, and has enough surprises to keep things from slowing down.  There are some life lessons presented of course, but they're not heavy-handed and integrate completely with the story without derailing the ride.

We mostly follow Darren as he gets used to being a vampire and living with the Cirque du Freak and have plot points fed to us by Reilly about the ominous Mr Dez Tiny.  Chris Massoglia is fairly bland as Darren, but that's really what the role calls for, playing straight man to the freaks around him.  His surrounding cast is spot on with great turns by Reilly and Josh Hutcherson as Steve and pleasant surprises from Patrick Fugit (unrecognizable as the snake boy) and Jessica Carlson as a seemingly normal girl with a little surprise.  Also keep an eye out for Willem Dafoe in a role that answers the question of who should play director John Waters when the inevitable biopic gets green-lit.  If I have one quibble, it's that the film plays a bit like a set up for a series, which it technically is, so it's a little hard to fault it that, and in the time of Harry Potter, it's practically assumed.  Other than that, this is not something the gore hounds orTwilight fans will probably want to get near, but for those with kids who've passed the Pixar/Disney (tween & early teen) stage, it could be a movie you can share and enjoy together, which honestly is quite a feat.