Not only does Vampires Suck have some really horrible messages, even for the lowest quality of comedies it has very little entertaining humor.
Becca Crane's life gets complicated when she enters Sporks Washington (she has to move there to live with her dad since her mom ran off with Tiger Woods). Her father can't believe she's grown up ("Your tits are huge," he remarks), her friends are very quirky (one of them is struggling to keep up her long distance relationship with a soldier named John), her romantic interest is an undead blood-addict (he also sparkles in the sun), and a childhood friend with a crush on her has grown canine features (some of them rather feminine). As you have probably guessed, this is a parody of the Twilight Saga. What you might not have heard is that it is total garbage.
I enjoy watching the homemade parodies of Twilight on YouTube. Frankly, I thought they weren't just more original than this, I think writers/producers/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans) went so far as to steal their ideas. And by steal, I don't mean giving an honorary tribute to them, I mean they just packed that stuff into their movie changing only enough that they hope people won't notice (probably because their changes result in it not being funny).
What makes a good parody is that it takes an element of popular films and expands on it in a way that shows its absurdity. Violence and vulgarities enter in only to further show a silly element in the original. For example, in Airplane, we see passengers lining up with creative weapons in order to beat a female survivor who is panicking. Yes, the scene is funny because of the violence, but the violence wouldn't be funny if it weren't for the fact that many movies showed slapping someone hard as a good way to calm them down. Likewise, when we see a proper woman snort cocaine after being mortified over the drinking of the man sitting next to her, it is to mock common cliches on types of characters, not to just shock us with the presence of drugs. Sure, this movie has a few exceptions that are just cheap laughs (such as the inflatable auto-pilot) but these are kept to a minimum and use either wordplay or creative imagery to make their point.
Vampires Suck wants to be Airplane, but it misses the point of Airplane's jokes. In fact, the only element of Twilight that Friedberg and Seltzer seem to actually have thought up a way to mock is the story's concern over virginity. Sadly, it is difficult to make the idea of a teenager wanting to stay pure an absurd concept, so this joke falls flat.
Not being funny is a problem, but not one to earn a movie a D-. The bigger problem with the film is that to fill space of a feature presentation (unlike Epic Movie, Vampires does not have a wide array of movies to joke over) the audience is barraged by terrible morals. This probably an attempt at rebellious critiques of society, but since nobody put the effort into coming up with well thought out points, the story relies on stereotypes about what teens are mad at adults over. As a result, the movie endorses teenage drinking (while driving!), homophobia, and the aforementioned mocking of sexual purity.
Vampires does have one funny concept--though this is more due to good acting than production creativity. Jenn Proske as Becca does an excellent job at capturing and ridiculing the depressed rudeness that Bella from Twilight flaunts. The detail and astuteness in mimicking Kristen Stewart in a humorous manner is praise-worthy, but judging by the rest of the film I doubt Friedberg and Seltzer had much to do with this.
What is an attempt at an in-joke is in fact only worthy of being washed out with the sewage. For those looking for a Twilight parody, check out the videos high-schoolers are posting on YouTube. For those wanting a parody movie, check out Zombieland. For those looking for a legal alternative to water-boarding, check this out.
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