Who’s In It: John C. Reilly, Josh Hutcherson, Chris Massoglia, Michael Cerveris, Ray Stevenson, Ken Watanabe, Patrick Fugit, Jessica Carlson, Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek, Orlando Jones
The Basics: Goody two-shoes Darren (Chris Massoglia) and his delinquent BFF Steve (Josh Hutcherson) take a walk on the wild side when a traveling circus comes to their sleepy town. The pair are entranced by a vampire named Mr. Crepsley (John C. Reilly) and his poisonous pet spider Octa, who bites Steve and puts him in a coma. To save his friend’s life, Darren makes a Great Personal Sacrifice and they both get thrust into an age-old war between peace-loving vampires and their evil counterparts, the “Vampanese.”
And Then, Things Start To Get Silly: A few ridiculous plot points later, Darren’s become a half-vampire working for Crepsley and Steve has chosen the dark side, and a morbidly obese bald man has pitted them against each other in a saga that the filmmakers hope will take many sequels to play out. Oh, and Ray Stevenson plays a dirty, insane vampire and Willem Dafoe shows up in a pencil moustache to out-weird everyone else. (By the way, this is all based on the first three novels in a 12-book series by author Darren Shan, who wins Pretentious Author of the Year for naming his fictional hero after himself.)
What’s The Deal: You see all that explaining it took to set up the basic plot of Cirque du Freak? Watching the actual movie requires even more patience. It’s a shame, since I was rooting for director Paul Weitz in the epic Weitz Family Vampire Movie Showdown of 2009. (Brother Chris has a little film called The Twilight Saga: New Moon coming out soon. You might have heard of it?) The truth is, Cirque du Freak shines when it retreats to the wondrous world of its sideshow freaks, but when that world collides with Darren’s straight, suburban life, the film feels tediously disjointed. Even worse, the adult actors turn the theatrics all the way to eleven like their careers depend on it, else they get lost in the shadows of the vast ensemble cast.
The Downside Of Kid Movies Is That You Hire Kid Actors: 17-year-old Chris Massoglia is fine in the way that vanilla ice cream is fine -- until you remember that this bland, monotone-sounding kid is supposed to carry the movie. In fact, you can pretty much imagine any Jonas brother in Massoglia’s place, which might actually boost the film’s box office potential. Josh Hutcherson is more on his game after honing his craft in films like Firehouse Dog, in which his co-star was a cartoon, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which his co-star was a cartoon named Brendan Fraser.
Thank Goodness For: Salma Hayek as a bearded lady. Patrick Fugit as Evra the Snake Boy, who really just wants to record an indie rock album. Ken Watanabe as the Cirque’s bulbous-headed ringleader. And last but not least, Reilly letting loose as the foppish, jaded Crepsley.
How Are These Vampires Vampires, Again? Cirque du Freak is amusingly bloodless, thanks to some creative liberties taken with traditional vampire lore. For example, these bloodsuckers only have to politely nick their victims for a quick drink, and they use their sharp fingernails as weapons in a bizarre form of vampire martial art. They also “turn” humans simply by pricking their fingers, which allows Weitz to avoid showing a grown man putting his mouth on a teenage boy in a PG-13 family film.