One of my favorite Voltaire quotes goes like this: "The best way to become boring is to say everything". Cirque du Freak suffers from this problem. It's a total "meh" movie, full of wonderful actors and an intriguing premise that goes nowhere. The film is adapted from The Saga of Darren Shan books, and combines bits from the first two or three installments. It tries so hard to cram everything in that nothing is resolved or approached with any skill. But that is just one of the film's many problems that ultimately derail what could've been enjoyable.
The lead character is the movie's biggest hurdle. He's more than a hurdle. He's a stumbling block. Chris Massoglia plays Darren, a typical kid with a boring life of studying and hanging out with his best friend Steve(Josh Hutcherson). Steve comes from a troubled home, apparently. He's frankly a bit of a douche. One day out of nowhere they are invited to a freak show, hosted by a guy with a big ass head(Ken Watanabe!!?). Darren is identified by a bearded Salma Hayek as some sort of chosen one. He unwittingly breaks a pact between a faction of vampires, one side led by Larten Crepsley(John C. Reilly), who has learned to live without having to kill people. Their rivals? Eh, not so much. They are led by some fat ifeminate guy. Why is he so feminine? Not sure, exactly. Larten becomes Darren's mentor, turn him into a vampire without a lot of haggling to be honest. You'd think becoming part of the undead would be a major life decision, but I guess not. Steve gets jealous and vows vengeance on both. It's all quite random.
Darren and Larten travel with the Cirque du Freak. A hodge podge of carnival odditites that include the aforementioned bearded Hayek, Patrick Fugit as a lizard boy, some chick with a monkey tail who is the worst love interest evah, and a host of other familiar faces with severe deformities. They ultimately don't matter much to the story. But then again nothing really does.
There's something to be said about just how dull Chris Massoglia is as the main character of this story. I couldn't pick him out of a police lineup. He looks like he should be manning the lights at a high school play or handing out flyers for discount pizza. He has no charisma. I'd say he has negative heat. His counterpart, Josh Hutcherson goes to waste here as well but that has more to do with the lousy script. Hutcherson was quite good in Bridge to Terabithia, a far better film than this. John C. Reilly is clearly having a good time with his role, hamming it up every chance he gets, but towards the end I got the impression even he was looking sideways at the director during some of these scenes. Can't say I blame him.
Potential for a fun film can be found buried way...way..down deep. The idea of a vampire war is intriguing stuff that could be fun to watch if a capable writer/director can be found. After the dismal showing this one made, however, I doubt we'll ever see it come to pass. Probably better that way.
4/10
