I saw the Vampire's Assistant last night for the first time. The only reason I left it until this morning to write my review of it is because I was so upset after seeing it that I wanted to let myself ooff overnight. Unfortunately I am still pissed off about what I saw.
The movie started out really well, giving the illusion that it was going to follow the original storyline in a decent manner, making a few differences for screen writing etc. Then suddenly the entire storyline changes. Gavner Purl is introduced, his character is portrayed completely inaccurately, Mr Tiny makes an appearance from the very beginning, only new he is no longer the strange little man in green wellington boots. That I can forgive, aesthetically (and for film purposes) I could be persuaded that a purple tinged existence in a pin-stripe suit would suit him better, but then Murlough made his entrance.
When i read Tunnels Of Blood I loved Murlough; he was completely insane, and nothing spices up a story like the insane - they have no boundaries, look at Batman's Joker for example. Insanity is the spice of life.
In this film however, Murlough seemed somewhat sane, and nothing more than a bodyguard/ puppet for Mr Tiny. In fact, now that I think about it the entire opening credits of the movie was basically just puppets being pulled around - an obvious reference to Mr Tiny's involvement, which completely ruins any future films in the series because the major shock in the books themselves is the fact that Mr had puppeteered everything the entire time and no one had any idea until the very end.
Another thing that also pissed me off greatly was the fact that they introduced a new, and completely unnecessary character named Rebecca, who spent all of fifteen seconds being Darren's love interest in the movie, which didn't fit in with the plot and was just wholly unnecessary. The plot would have made much more sense without her, and they could have easily had Darren drunk from a more important member of the cast (Sam Grest anyone?) and kept that ridiculous side-plot in the gravyard where it belongs (and I'm not being punny).
Mr Crepsly also had the misfortune of suffering another totally unnecessary love interest, with the introduction of him dating the Truska, the Bearded Lady, who can conveniently see the future too which was just stupid, seeing as no one took any notice of her predictions. This totally undermined the original Mr Crepsley's personality as he is supposedly into being a lone wolf, who is now regrettably stuck with a child, but the film made them seem more like a happy family.
Also even though the movie only had the rights to the first three books, they went ahead anyway and had a huge face-off between Darren and Steve (while Darren's family hung from the ceiling, even though they thought he was dead till now). Oh, and the Vampaneze announce Steve to be their next Lord and Murlough becomes his mentor (? so much for being insane, the real Murlough would have killed and eaten him). The last half hour of the movie is an absolute train-wreck, and it looks to me as though they were three-quarters through the movie and then realised 'oh shit, we forgot to put in all this other crap' so they stuffed as much of the storyline in there as possible.
The storyline was also so badly explained and the characters were so badly introduced that anyone who hasn't read the books will find this extremely hard to follow (just ask my boyfriend - he had no idea what was going on).
The best thing about the movie was John C. Reilly. He was the only on that could act in the entire movie. Well done man, you saved it from suffering my full hatred.
No comments:
Post a Comment