Richelle Mead’s award
winning fantasy series of Vampire world found its way to celluloid (or should I
say digital print) last week. The poster
of the movie very proudly shows 2 gorgeous looking girls dressed in black with
the words THEY SUCK AT SCHOOL prominently plastered across (http://www.imdb.com/media/rm267050240/tt1686821?ref_=tt_ov_i).
Now that poster
can get into the greatest booboo posters of all time because it was wrong at so
many levels and I will leave you to guess what I am hinting at. Unfortunately that is not just the only thing
wrong with Vampire Academy – a genre of cinema and reading that I will never be
able to understand or dissect. Why are
these flimsy, fantasy, vampire movies so immensely popular? A topic for another
day I guess.
Vampire Academy begins
by establishing that there are 3 kinds of Vampires.
- The Moroi or the pure blooded Vampires are those who have only
Vampire Blood – not as food but in their veins.
- The Dhampir are mixed blood Vampires i.e. Vampire + Human. They have both qualities which enables
them to walk in broad daylight unlike Moroi. They also go on to become Guardians of Moroi
- The Strigoi are Moroi Vampires who have turned own their own i.e. fed on Moroi. They are The Undead and the biggest threat to Moroi.
With that out of
the way, lets look at the chief characters and where they fall. Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) is a Damphir
guardian to Moroi Princess and Queen in waiting – Vasilisa “Lisa” Dragomir
(Lucy Fry). The 2 have run away from
Vampire Academy a couple of years back.
But their luck has finally run out and a troop of Damphir led by
Guardian Dimitri Belikov (Danila Kozlovsky) has finally caught up with them.
Back at the
Academy Lisa starts getting gory threats to her life obviously since she is the
next in line to Moroi Queen Tatiana (Joely Richardson). Turns out that one of their favourtie
teachers, Ms. Karp (Claire Foy), asks Rose to run away because Lisa’s life is
in danger. So it comes as no surprise that the threats start as soon as they
are back.
I haven’t read
the book and with the rave reviews online, I am tempted to actually give it a
shot. However, I can tell you for sure
that the movie is not the benchmark for Fantasia in any manner. There are scenes that clearly were meant to
be calming or serious that all but make you hold your stomach in pain – out of
hilarity. Chief amongst these scenes is
when Dimitri is performing Tai Chi on the Academy’s lawns.
A few minutes
into the movie and one cannot help but draw parallels to the vastly more
successful Twilight series. More
importantly, the overlap with Harry Potter cannot be missed as soon as the
girls walk back on campus. The movie
lands up being neither as bad as Twilight nor as good as Harry Potter.
Vampire Academy
does its best to hold the audience including a desperate attempt of a 17 year
old Rose almost doing it with Dimitri. Ahem.
Has it become socially acceptable to show underage sex (thankfully Zoey is 20) in
mainstream cinema? Nevertheless, it does little to improve the movie.
Thankfully the
movie didn’t suck as much as the poster.
Some good effects and a reasonable story make Vampire Academy a
reasonable watch. 5 on 10. Watch it on
TV or DVD whenever you can. Try and read
the book before to figure out if it was in line.
Watch the trailer
on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3576277017/?ref_=tt_ov_vi
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