4. Vamps (2012)

I hope everyone had a very Happy Halloween! Now back to your regularly scheduled countdown. Oh dear... okay, this movie is embarrassingly high on my countdown despite io9 calling the film "a disaster" and it earning a questionable 50% on RottenTomatoes. However, let me just form my fingers into the shape a 'W' (yes, Clueless style) and say: "Whatever..."

You see, I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties, and I currently work with adolescents who were born after the year 2000. What I'm saying is that Amy Heckerling's Vamps is a charming movie that is pretty much made with me as the target audience. The film just makes it impossible for me not to love it.

Vamps, as previously mentioned, is the brainchild of Amy Heckerling, the writer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless (the latter of which she also directed). If you grew up when Clueless was big, this movie will have some signs of familiarity: spunky discussions about fashion and boys, pink hair curlers, and Alicia Silverstone. But unlike her earlier works, Heckerling's vampire film is less about teenage youth and more about the struggles of aging.

The film centers around friends Goody and Stacey, two single city women who just happen to be vampires (though they only eat the blood of rodents, not people). Stacey was turned in the early 1990s, so fans who grew up in the near-Clueless era will feel more than a hint of nostalgia as Stacey gushes over The Cure and young Michael J. Fox. Goody has told Stacey that they're "nearly the same age," while hiding from her best friend a horrifying secret: she's really over a hundred years old.

But they both fit in so... well... 

The actual plot of this movie is honestly almost beside the point; there is an evil vampire to battle, Van Helsings to dodge, an IRS versus vampires subplot, and a vampire pregnancy. However, the real conflict is Goody's struggle with the world moving on without her. After being in her early twenties (physically) for over a hundred years, she is starting to become weary of her eternal single-party-girl state. This becomes more apparent as she reconnects (by pretending to be her own daughter) with an ex-boyfriend (Richard Lewis) who is now an aging adult and who has a wife dying of cancer. And as the craziness of the "plot" continues, and she also sees Stacey earning the promise of a non-vampiric family and life, Goody feels more and more lost in another era. At one point, she shrieks:

It's so annoying; you have to keep learning to use new crap that doesn't actually do anything better than the old crap, which is incompatible with the new crap, all so that you can have blogs and watch fake teenagers and real housewives, and its all happening too fast and I'm tired! I'm just sick and tired of it all! 

This likely is hauntingly relatable for anyone who grew up in a pre-internet time and is struggling to keep up with a fast-moving and youthful world. The resolution of Goody being "sick and tired" actually made me tear up, which is impressive given how silly the rest of the film is.

The film also is one of the more vampire-centric and female centric movies I've watched (the other being Wir Sind Nacht/We Own the Night). Almost every character in the film is a vampire and the movie focuses quite a bit on their culture (The Sanguines' Anonymous support groups most notably). Heckerling also not only focuses on her two female protagonists, but really puts their concerns front and center. The themes are not that different from Wir Sind Nacht, but they are dealt with humorously rather than (melo)dramatically. For example, when a male vampire leers at a woman in Juicy pants and notes that she is "asking for it," Goody intervenes and then uses her vampire hypnotism to convince the girl to go after "nice guys." It's a funny scene and also one which addresses victim blaming and rape culture without seeming too preachy.

Ultimately, this is a vampire comedy that seems to really love it's subject. There were so many jokes about Renfields and Van Helsing and Dracula. Throughout the movie, I grinned like an idiot, laughed out loud, and (yes) even got my heartstrings tugged near the end. This is one of the silliest movies I've watched, without question, and sometimes the humor and plot is really stupid... but it's a really lovable kind of stupid.

Also the cast is great: not only is there Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter,but Malcom McDowell also plays a unique interpretation of Dracula, and Angel in America and Weeds' star Justin Kirk has fun chewing the scenery as a non-vegetarian vampire on the prowl. The Princess Bride's Wallace Shawn is also in the film as a decedent of Van Helsing, but he ultimately doesn't do that much.  I'd say the weakest performance comes from the "villain" Sigourney Weaver. She looks like she's having a great time chewing up the scenery even more than Kirk, but the performance does ring as more cheesy and forced in an otherwise more charming film.

This film probably won't appeal to everyone as much as it appealed to me, but if you feel, like Goody, that sometimes life is moving too fast and your era is starting to pass you by, this film can be a lot of heartfelt and relatable fun.

Rating: 4 out of 5 bites