Vampires Suck

Writer-director team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the Date Movie and Meet the Spartans collaborators who have made a career of catering to ninth-graders with nothing else to do on a Friday night, make movies that aren’t meant to be watched so much as texted during. (Smart money says Friedberg and Seltzer never sit through these movies in their entirety.) Their Vampires Suck isn’t a spoof of vampire movies as a genre, which would demand an audience whose collective memory reached beyond 2008, but of the first two Twilight movies specifically, with iconic scenes re-enacted and laced with gags. Many of the film’s jokes, such as they are, consist of mentioning the titles of contemporary reality-TV shows, which should be a riot for viewers who think that their cable-channel guide is the soul of wit. Jenn Proske provides a reasonable facsimile of Kristen Stewart’s soulful lip gnashing and eyebrow fluttering, and there’s a funny bit with a Segway, but Saturday Night Live‘s “The Franks” parody had more laughs (and the distinct advantage of being only two minutes long). If you’ve ever read a single book, you’re probably better than this.