I wonder if when you get a really good grade at Vampire Academy they call it an A positive.
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“Vampire Academy” is based on the first of a six book series of young adult novels about a world of vampires and half vampires where half vampires protect the peaceful vampires from the zombie vampires… or something like that. Whatever the case, our lead half vampire Rose fights her way through the film protecting a vampire she has a special connection with while at the same time doing her best to throw as many sarcastic one liners out as she possibly can, even if only a few of them land. Yeah, this is a lousy movie.
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There really isn’t much to like here. As mentioned, it doesn’t completely miss on the humor tip, I may have smiled a time or two at a clever line delivery or quip, but at about a 10% humor success ratio, that really isn’t a lot to celebrate, so I’ll say the best thing was the structure of the plot mystery. I mean its not like I didn’t see a couple of the “twists” coming a mile away, but at least the filmmakers did a decent job at revealing the right clues to us at the right time, that is, if you could actually follow what was going on.
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Maybe it’s because I haven’t read the book, but trying to distinguish the Dhampir from the manoi, and the manoi from the strigoi, and then what that meant for the plot was hard enough without trying to also figure out the crazy magic part of the equation where apparently vampires have some sort of avatar element bending abilities, and also can hypnotize you, oh and then there was something called the spirit? and some sort of magical wolf dog? It’s just too much for my little non young adult romance fiction brain to handle. Not only that but the movie seems to have two disparate tones colliding where half of it wants to be a snarky teen drama, but the other half wants to be a serious monster movie, and it just doesn’t work as either. Plus the tone isn’t helped by the overacting and corny line delivery that seems to happen more often than not. I feel like they were probably going for Twilight meets Heathers or Juno but instead ended up hitting Twilight meets High School Musical… without the singing… and just a tad more adult humor.
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At the end of the day, a decent mystery structure and a few laughs aren’t near enough to offset a poorly acted and inconsistent film that is often hard to follow even if you actually wanted to. It graduates with a D+
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