16 year old boy becomes a vampire, girls DON'T scream?

The Darren Shan vampire books have been a source of contempt for me as a teenager in school, friends would sit and read the series in between Alex Ryder books, and say how amazing they all are. I took a look at the opening chapters of both series' and boy howdy did they stink to high heaven. With Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, Hollywood tries to bring back some elements of classic vampires following last year's vampire fuck ups, True Blood, which at least kept them violent, and Twilight, which is something we'll only discuss as we move all copies of the series into an incinerator.

With this film, Universal are clearly trying to launch a franchise, with a starry cast, lots left hanging for future editions and a style reminiscent of A Series Of Unfortunate Events and a majority of 80's and 90's kids adventure flicks, light hearted, silly but with serious elements as well. It's a shame that the lead character is painfully bland, his best friend, that kid from Firehouse Dog and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, is boring at being brash, coming across like a spoilt kid trying to be street, and it's a shame that the good cast get limited time. Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock is always good, here she's a woman in the freak show that can regenerate her limbs, Ken Watanabe is an 8 foot tall head of the traveling show, and is far too underused in the film, not only for his calibre, but for what the role should call for.

Salma Hayek has about 3 scenes, and gets so little to do it's just not right, Punisher himself Ray Stevenson is sadly stuck pulling a mix of American, English, Scottish and Eastern European as some zombie thing, Patrick Fugit is some hip young lizard boy, he's rather good for someone who actually has screentime in comparison to the majority. The only actor who is of any quality that gets enough time is Mr. John C. Reilly, he's also the film's best asset, Reilly is almost always amazing, and here is no exception, playing a vampire who has had eternal life for well over 150 years, and is slowly showing signs of aging, he's not the young man he was when he first got the curse. Reilly is hysterical and interesting, you care for the character, and laugh at the antics, a sequence where he has to pretend the young hero has died so his family won't worry about his disappearance, he injects a numbing agent, then a minute later breaks his neck and kicks him off the roof, brilliant.

It's a shame the writing is bland and uninspired, the CGI is rather repulsive, and the action sequences near the end near incomprehensible, Batman Begins confusing at times. A fight scene involving Reilly and Stevenson on some chairs off a stage involves lots of CGI fast blurring and Bourne style camera shots, and if you can tell me who hit who where without an audio, I will salute you, and say you have no frakking life.

The music was soli, similar score to most teen based action adventure flicks, editing was fine, pacing was a bit too slow, and what you'll notice I've barely talked about, the plot, was dead on arrival, film only began 40 minutes into it's 1 hour 40 minute runtime.

4/10