User Reviews

As a big fan of the vampire books by Irish writer Darren Shan I wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing Cirque du Freak: A vampire's assistant. Sometimes you should let a book be a book. And judging by the movie trailers the casting looked all wrong and the main character seemed too boring and too American to my taste. But in the end curiosity won and I went to see it anyway.

The vampire saga of Darren Shan consists of 12 books (four trilogies) and aims at kids aged 11-14. None other than JK Rowling was a big fan of this series so comparisons to Harry Potter were made very soon. What the two series have in common is the scope of the story. The tale of Darren Shan also has a Voldemort and a big (but very misty) showdown (in the last book). Like Harry Potter Darren Shan is drawn into a mysterious but exciting new world. Both teenagers must learn to control their power and learn the ways of being a new sort of being (wizard or vampire). So obviously there is a connection.

The movie is loosely based on the first trilogy, Vampire Blood. Darren Shan is an ordinary 16 year old teenager with a big fascination for spiders. One day he and his best friend Steve go to a real freakshow, where they meet vampire Larten Crepsley. Steve wants to become a vampire because his life stinks anyway. But Crepsley decides to chose Darren as his vampire student. So Darren fakes his death and moves to the camping ground of the Cirque du Freak. He befriends a snake boy, a monkey girl and a woman with a beard and tries to go on with his (vampire) life. But he soon finds out that the vampire world is on the brink of a full scale war between vampires (the kind that only drinks human blood and takes what it needs) and the Vampaneze (vampires who kill the humans they drink from). And somehow both parties think that Darren is destined to play a big part in this war…

Watching this movie I tried to forget all the things I knew from the books. And yes, this movie experience turned out to be a very enjoyable one.

Chris Massoglia (The Hole) looked miscast at first as Darren Shan. But as the story progresses you can see why he was chosen. His innocence works very well and you can see him develop into the hero he will one day be. In my imagination Larten Crepsley was more serious than the one given us by actor John C. Reilly (Chicago ). But I did enjoy his version of the experienced vampire mentor in the movie. But to me Josh Hutcherson (Journey to the centre of the earth) was best cast as Steve. Steve hates the world and his character will play a major part in the rest of the story (= other books). There's a lot of evil in Steve, but in this movie it remains at the surface. Sort of. As fans of the books all know, he's capable of doing much more damage.

The pace of the movie is pretty good: there's a lot to be told here. There's a lot of humour in it (the books were pretty serious) and the voice-over by Darren Shan works very well. Especially the first 20 minutes (with the actual freakshow) were well done. Salma Hayek looks stunning with beard and actually gets more screen time than in the books. Too bad her acting isn't always that convincing. Ken Watanabe is a great Mr. Tall, the boss of Cirque du Freak. He gives the movie a great mysterious quality.

Okay, then the bad things. Sometimes the acting and action scenes were bad. Some of the effects looked fake. And the fact that it all ended with an ordinary rumble was a disappointment. The ending seemed very rushed. But what really let me down were the mysterious Mr. Tiny and his army of Little People. In the books Mr. Tiny is a cold hearted man who's so scary and powerful that every word he uses can be felt as a dagger in your heart. But in the movie he's just a silly old bald man who talks too much. His army of Little People – Jawa like creatures he raised from the dead – seemed too computer generated and looked like a pitiful low-budget effort to imitate Gollum. Too bad.

But overall I really enjoyed Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. It's a good introduction to the vampire world of Darren Shan and I sincerely hope that the movie will be so successful that there will be a part 2. Because when Darren, Crepsley and Little Creature Harkat travel to Vampire Mountain , that's when the real fun begins!

Starting out in the movie, Steve (Josh Hutcherson) and Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) have always been best friends. After skipping class and getting in trouble at school Darren is forced by his parents Don McManus and Colleen Camp, Mr. and Mrs. Shan to not be friends anymore. When getting an invite to a Cirque du Freak show they will never forget, Darren steals Crepsley's spider and Steve try's to convince Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly) a two hundred year old Vampire to make him a vampire. Massoglia has some real potential i think when he made this movie and I'm sure will grow to be a great actor in the film industry. Reilly is funny yet serious in his role in the movie which makes it fun to watch. I caught him being interviewed on Conan the week before his movie came out talking about his childhood and when his mother brought him and his brother to see Halloween. They were both only twelve and ten at the time. Wanting to leave the movie all throughout, when getting back home Reilly's brother plays a prank on him when he is told to shut off all the lights in the basement. After getting to the last one above the stars his brother turns it off on him and he is scared whit-less and runs up the stairs terrified. Even just telling his story about his childhood makes me laugh. After giving some insight on his childhood it helps you understand what life was like for him before he became a star. I like hearing about the down to earth things with stars, it makes them seem normal in a sense that they are just like regular people. There was not to many special effects, but the small ones of the vampires running and the spider and the Cirque Characters was pretty good. Makeup was really well done and the costumes were as well. Looking forward to see what else Massoglia has next on his agenda with movies, hopefully see him sometime within the next year. This movie will leave you satisfied at the end because there is a great performance from Massoglia and Reilly. See my Reviews on getthenew.com, thanks ahb.

This film is one in a long line of made for teens vampire flicks which includes such fare as "Monster Squad" and "My Babysitter's a Vampire". In a bit of an anomaly, the two principal characters are portrayed by relative unknowns (at least to this viewer), while the supporting cast boasts a formidable cast of talented actors. Some, like Salma Hayek and Willem Dafoe have only brief screen appearances, while John C. Reilly as ringmaster Crepsley plays a significant role in the conflict that develops between childhood buddies Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) and Steve (Josh Hutcherson). When Steve recognizes Crepsley from the pages of a vampire magazine, he offers himself up to be a vampire in training, but is thwarted when bitten by a lethally poisonous spider. In order to save his friend's life, Darren offers himself as Crepsley's assistant, but with no taste for blood, he's only committed to being a half vampire.

Since I follow vampire films as best I can, I'm always intrigued by any new information that comes my way via new vampire lore. This story introduces a class of vampires called the 'vampaneze', those that have no problem killing their victims after drinking their blood. Contrast that with your run of the mill, everyday vampire that only wants to suck your blood and turn you into a vampire themselves. Much more humane. There's also this tidbit of information in the story - vampires exhale a gas that has the ability to knock out humans. How did no one think of this before?

Before all the business started with Darren and Steve figuratively going for each other's throat, I was most intrigued by the opening of the picture with the introduction of all those circus freaks. Alexander Ribs and Rhamus Twobellies were actually kind of gross, but they did remind me of the actual physical oddities that appeared in the Tod Browning classic from 1932 titled "Freaks". In that one you had the real deal, with characters like the Siamese Twins, a bird woman, a bearded lady, a pin-head and the amazing caterpillar boy. With those kind of attractions, you didn't need a vampire!

CDF is arguably my favorite book series of all time, so I really tried to go into this with an open mind. Judging on it's own merits, I would rate the movie a 4 or 5: barely worth watching until the end, but not quite bad enough to bring back to Blockbuster before it's over. Judging it as an interpretation of the books, it doesn't even deserve a 1. Rule #1: if you're making a movie out of a series of popular books, you need to keep more than the characters names. And that is about all they left the same. Mannerisms, appearances, plot, everything was changed. Even the tagline for the movie is wrong, because the vampires in this series aren't immortal.

The plot is about what you'd get if you threw the first 3 books of the series into a blender, dumped that into a tank of starved, ravenous sharks, then let all of histories greatest sushi chefs ginsu it until nothing recognizable remained. One thing that keeps popping up: YES this is a vampire movie, but NO, Twilight fans, this series was around for about a decade before the solar-powered disco balls ruined vampire fiction for us all.

John C. Reilly gives probably the best performance in the film. While a good bit different than described in the books, his portrayal of Mr. Crepsley was at least entertaining to watch. William Dafoe appears for all of about 5 minutes as the supposed-to-be battle hardened veteran vampire Gavner Purl, except Dafoe looks and vaguely acts like John Waters. Ken Watanabe is merely decent as the circus owner, Mr. Tall. Michael Cerveris' character, Desmond Tiny, is supposed to be the embodiment of cold, bone chilling evil, but comes across as the flamboyant uncle you try to avoid at family reunions. I have nothing to say about Salma Hayek, who is there for eye candy first, and plot significance second. Finally, Ray Stevenson almost comes off as menacing as the villain Murlough, even though the character is supposed to have dark purple skin and glowing red eyes, hair, lips and nails, but following the source material is for squares Daddy-O!

But Chris Massoglia, playing the lead role, literally could not have been worse. I've used this analogy before, but I have seen corpses show more emotion than this kid. In a scene when he has to fake his own death(undoubtedly causing his family and loved ones incredible pain and suffering, mind you) he acts as if he could be going to a pizza parlor for dinner. In the books, Darren is an impulsive hothead. In the film, Massoglia could have been replaced with a Bozo the Clown blow up doll and you would have seen more emotion (at least the doll would smile). Yeah, yeah, one could argue that he's young and inexperienced, but I don't buy that. I've known first time actors, many of whom were much younger than Massoglia, do much better jobs than he did. Hell, Anna Paquin won an Oscar when she was 12! If there is any justice in the world, Chris Massoglia will never work again and Edward Norton will finally win an Oscar.

I did get one brief laugh towards the end though, when Reilly was fighting Ray Stevenson's character, and that was only because in the books Darren remarks on how short their fight was (supposed to be) because "they weren't trying to please action-hungry audiences", when the fight scene was nothing but spectacle filled, drawn out filth attempting to do just that.

If you would like an emotionally driven, decently written vampire saga, read the Cirque du Freak books. If you'd like to see a book-film adaptation so bad that some electricity might actually refuse to power it, watch this movie.

2/10, and that's me being generous.

Having read all the books in my youth I was extremely excited to watch the film. I didn't mind that they may combine a few books into one film. But this was so far from the original story line, far too Americanised and just an insult to the books.

Mr Crepsly was not a very comedic character in the book, I like John C Reilly but not right at all for the role. The reveal that his best friend is a vampeneeze in the first film makes no sense because Steve is supposed to join the crew later on and be revealed at a later point so basically ruins that whole plot line there.

It's nowhere near as brutal or graphic as it could have been. I know it's for young adults but honestly it was so poorly made its almost as if they were told some character names and a loose plot and made the rest up.

If you liked the books then don't waste your time with this film.

Now I am a fan of the book series, and for book fans out there I can tell you that they changed a lot, took out a lot of the subtleties (it's patently obvious that Mr. Tiny is controlling Darren and Steve's lives the whole time, rather than a hidden thing revealed at the end like in the books), moved the plot forward, eliminated Debbie and replaced her with a monkey-girl, made his parents awful, etc....and for non-book fans, the plot can seem a little muddled at times, and the main actor who plays Darren is frankly a terrible actor, even if he looks the part....

And yet, it's still quite an enjoyable film, full of lots of laughs (especially from John C. Reilly, who is brilliant and a riot as Mr. Crepsley, it is worth watching this movie just for him alone!) and fun and colorful characters and an interesting story--enough of the books is retained for book fans like me to feel warm and fuzzy recalling them (this is no "Ella Enchanted" or "The Dark is Rising" abomination), and overall I think it's worth seeing. Everyone in the theater with me was laughing many times throughout the film, and besides the main kid everyone gave a great performance--Salma Hayek, the kid who plays Steve, William Dafoe, Patrick Fugit, the list goes on....

So in all, a decent film worth watching, and which I hope does well enough for a sequel....

Where does one start with such a waste of electricity as this must have been?

I am not from the intended demographic which clearly seems to be 10 - 15 yr olds ie those that read the entertaining books by author Darren Shan.

Puerile in the extreme from start to finish this offering is poorly scripted and acted throughout, it seems ALL expense has been spared with effects and how William Defoe ended up in this garbage is mind boggling.

My boys, fans of Mr Shan's work and from the right target group were embarrassed that they had requested its purchase and viewing, it is such a shame that reasonable children's books are bastardised to make sub standard bandwagon jumping movies.

Appallingly bad, avoid at all costs and save yourself some angst and ire.