The Lost Boys

"Sleep all day.  Party all night.  Never grow old.  Never die.  It's fun to be a vampire."

That's a great tagline.  For as many vampire films as there have been over the years, surprisingly few spend any time on the allure of the vampire existence.  "Sleep all day.  Party all night"?  Who wouldn't want to do that forever?  I mean, aside from adults.  But that's the point, isn't it?  The Lost Boys doesn't focus on vampires as monsters, and it doesn't spend a whole lot of time on eroticism.  This movie argues that teens would want to become vampires because being a vampire is cool.  And that is more than enough reason to be an emotionally stunted asshat for eternity, right?

Michael (Jason Patric) and his little brother, Sam (Corey Haim), have just moved to a new town with their mother (Dianne Wiest).  Santa Carla is not a particularly fun place to be a teen, despite the fact that it is a scenic California beach town.  In fact, local graffiti claims the town to be the murder capital of the world; if you can't trust graffiti for the facts, who can you trust?  Michael quickly becomes infatuated with Star (Jami Gertz), a mysterious and frequently blank-looking young woman with the name of a horse.  Sam has a slightly more difficult time finding his place in the community, probably because he dresses like a jackass.

Sam does, however, meet Edgar (Corey Feldman) and Alan Frog (Jamison Newlander) at the local comic shop.  The brothers give Sam some not-so-subtle hints that Santa Carla is crawling with vampires, but he doesn't take them seriously because...well, because they're obviously morons.  Unfortunately, the morons are right.  Michael's lust for Star leads to him spending a lot of time with her and her guy friends.  That would be awkward enough in most social contexts, but these dudes are all full-fledged vampires.  Of course, Michael doesn't realize that, despite a lot of weird stuff happening.  Sure, the weird stuff (hallucinations, excessive fog, death-defying stunts, etc.) don't necessarily spell out "vampire," but I probably wouldn't have wanted to hang out with those guys for long.  Michael, though, gives in to peer pressure and unwittingly starts becoming a vampire.  Of course, you can argue that everything he does in this story is "unwitting" because he's not a terribly bright fellow.

You can sulk, or you can prove me wrong.  And Speed 2 doesn't help your case.

So what does Michael do?  Does he give in to his vampire hunger?  Does he try to hold on to his humanity?  Will Sam help him or hunt him?  And what about Star?  Was she really named after a horse?

I remember seeing The Lost Boys, both as a teenager and a preteen, and I remembered it being pretty cool.  It wasn't mind-blowingly awesome and it didn't drive me to wear plastic fangs, but I was certainly entertained.  The adult Brian has a little more experience, though, and I am able to recognize that The Lost Boys is pretty ridiculous.  For starters, a group of teenagers gathers on the beach to fist-pump to Tim Capello rocking out with a saxophone.

I'll ignore the obvious questions of how likely fist-pumping is to synthesizer-heavy music and instead point out that greasy muscleheads with accessory fetishes are probably as irresistible to vampires as fried food is to Americans.  It looks like he drizzled himself in butter, doesn't it?  I don't believe that any vampire could resist murdering him.  There are other examples, like the unnaturally deep voices of the Frog Brothers, the remarkable amount of punk and goth kids in a small town, and the prevalence of male belly shirts (Sam even has a Rob Lowe belly shirt poster on his wall!), but this video clip made it hard for me to focus on anything else in detail.

So...vampires wax their body hair?

The acting in the film isn't bad, but it's definitely in tune to the silliness of the movie.  Corey Haim was actually pretty good as the non-vampire brother and Jason Patric was decent, if you can get past how stupid his character was.  Really?  You expect me to believe that you can't tell the difference between wine and blood?  If the iron and salt didn't clue you in, the coagulated chunks probably should have.  Idiot.  The real star of the movie, though, is Kiefer Sutherland as David, the teenvamp leader.  It's not that he turned in a fabulous performance, but he did seem like a pretty cool rebel.  He was a little too needy for my taste, with all the "join us, Michael," but he fits the teenage appeal of this movie perfectly.  The rest of the cast is relatively unimportant.  Alex Winter and the other vampires offer some campy fun, Diane Wiest is the stereotypically clueless parent, and Corey Feldman is kind of amusing as an amateur vampire hunter.  Edward Herrmann is probably the most convincing actor in the supporting cast, but that might be because he's playing a variation of his typical square characters.  For what this movie is --- a vampire movie aimed at teens --- I think the acting is more than adequate.

"We're not up to anything, mom...we just have to hide this corpse upstairs"

There is an awful lot of camp in this movie, though.  Director Joel Schumacher doesn't know how to manufacture convincing emotions from his actors, so he often resorts to having them overact.  Normally, this annoys me, but I think it fits this script fairly well.  This was Schumacher's first special effects-driven movie, though, and he handled those scenes terribly.  Never mind the random way each vampire reacted when they died and the sometimes awful makeup jobs.

I'm referring to the less demanding scenes that should have been handled better.  For instance, when the vampires fly, we get POV shots...showing where they've been.  Unless vampires fly backwards, that's pretty hard to explain.  Speaking of which, what was going on with the motorcycle headlights that caused wind gusts...and then vanished?  Were the vampires on their scooters, huffing and puffing until they flew their bikes into the night sky?  And where did the Frog Brothers manage to find so much garlic?  That had to have been around forty pounds.  What about the I-have-a-flashlight-shining-up-at-my-face lighting for Kiefer Sutherland in the climactic sequence? 

None of these, on its own, is too awful.  When you see that many silly things in one movie, though, they do start to become more noticeable.

All in all, though, The Lost Boys is good enough.  It could have been a lot darker and creepier if it kept the R-rating and stayed closer to the concept of Peter Pan as a vampire, but it does a pretty good job of making vampires seem cool.

"Let's go cause some anemia!"

It is certainly not a great film, but it's enjoyable and frequently unintentionally funny.  As a mainstream film, I think The Lost Boys has the right tone and attitude, but the last third of the movie is too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Monsters vs. Aliens

I think the "versus" movie is a fantastic idea. When you explain exactly what the movie is about in the title, you don't have to waste unnecessary time developing characters or plot, and can just get on with the fight.  Freddy vs. Jason is, obviously, the best example of this, but there are a lot of good vs. match-ups out there.  Ninjas vs Pirates: The Movie, anyone?  Yes please!

Monsters vs. Aliens, for some unknown reason, chooses not to embrace its title and instead tries to tell a story.  Big mistake.  Instead of watching animated monsters fighting animated aliens, probably ripping their innards out and using them for jump rope, viewers are treated to the girl-power tale of Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), as she learns (SPOILER!!!) that happiness does not come from living for others.  Susan, later dubbed Ginormica, is the submissive fiancee of local weatherman and swollen ego, Derek (Paul Rudd), until she is struck by a meteor on their wedding day. 

On a side note, I'd just like to say that, if you find a large object falling toward you, DO NOT turn around and run away.  You're still in the line of impact, and you might not have the best depth perception; instead, run perpendicular to the object's path and you will hopefully avoid any meteors heading your way.  You're welcome. 

Anyway, Susan became radioactive and turned into a giant.  Once again, movies prove science wrong by showing how a horrible accident inevitably leads to super powers.  Take that, science!  Susan is quickly subdued by the military and taken to a military complex that houses other monsters.  The other monsters are an amorphous blob, B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist with a cockroach's head and abilities, Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a half-ape and half-amphibian evolutionary wonder, the Missing Link (Will Arnett), and a Chrysler Building-sized grub, Insectosaurus.  Susan is renamed Ginormica by the monsters' military liason, the R. Lee Ermy-esque General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland) and is told that she is now a monster.  See, it's funny because she looks like a normal woman (albeit 100 feet tall) and they're calling her a monster.  Get it?  Well, the kids will.  Susan has a hard time accepting her new role, especially when she is told that monsters never leave their secret military complex.  Frowny face emoticon!  Things change quickly when the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) shows up to conquer the planet.  Well, that's just his secondary goal.  What Gallaxhar really wants is the radiation that Susan has absorbed; this will return her to normal, but will give him ultimate power.  Obviously, this leads to the monsters being released to fight the alien menace; through the power of fist-fighting, Susan learns the value of self-esteem and true friends.

This movie is co-directed by Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Rob Letterman (Shark Tale), and you can identify elements of their previous work here.  My major problem with Dreamworks Animation's films is their lack of depth.  Sure, they're nice, light movies for little kids, but I like cartoons, too, man!  With Pixar making such amazing movies every year, Dreamworks' stuff often pales in comparison.  Here, we get a movie whose moral is basically that girls should have their own identity and not just be accessories to successful men.  Whoa...edgy!  This soft-sell of a tale is reminiscent of Letterman's Shark Tale' and its "lying is bad" moral.  On the bright side, Conrad Vernon's presence is felt, too.  One of the main reasons Shrek 2 is my favorite Shrek is because it is not afraid to just go for jokes.  Here, both Hugh Laurie and Seth Rogen are both used very well; neither really adds much to the plot, but both are decently funny whenever they get the chance (and I hate Rogen, so that's a huge compliment).  I think these joke characters (Insectosaurus is another) are really what work best in this movie.  It's just too bad they are sprinkled through a competent, but uninspired, main plot.

The animation in this movie is as good as you would expect.  While I have my own issues with Dreamworks Animation's stories, their movies always look great.  This movie was the first computer animated movie made in the new stereoscopic 3-D, but I just saw the 2-D version and it still looked good.

The voice acting is star-studded, but a little hit-and-miss.  Reese Witherspoon may or may not be a good choice as the main character; due to the story's strengths and weaknesses, she doesn't really get an opportunity to excel.  Hugh Laurie and Kiefer Sutherland might have been playing stock characters, but they did a great job diving into their roles; it is difficult to identify them in this film.  Seth Rogen and Rainn Wilson clearly had the most fun making this movie, and it shows.  It helps that their characters are both idiots, since that doesn't stretch their acting too far from their comfort zones.  Stephen Colbert was an inspired choice to play the President of the United States, but I was a little underwhelmed by the lines given to him; there's even a couple of minutes early on where his character is on screen, but has no dialogue.  What a waste!  The rest of the cast failed to impress me.  I didn't care for Will Arnett, as the Missing Link, in particular, but Paul Rudd, Amy Pohler, Julie White, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, Renee Zellweger, and John Krasinski all made brief and unmemorable appearances in the film.

I guess the bottom line here is how likable the movie is.  Kids will absolutely enjoy the movie.  B.O.B. plays for cheap laughs and his humor is aimed at the kids.  Adults will like some of the humor, sure (my favorite was Insectosaurus), but the story is saccharine enough to cause cavities.  There are certainly worse children's movies to watch, but I don't think this one has the all-ages appeal to make it a classic.