-By Frank Scheck
For movie details, please click here.
For those of you who have been desperately awaiting the latest
comic opus from David and Scott Hillenbrand, the creators of
National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze and its sequel
National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2: College @ Sea, well, the
suspense is over. The director-producer brothers have brought you
Transylmania, the latest in what will no doubt be—thanks to
the onslaught of vampires that have been lately populating movie
and television screens—an endless onslaught of bloodsucker
spoofs.
Hopefully, some of them will be better than this one and
Stan
Helsing, which recently made a brief pit stop in theatres
before being shipped off to video stores.
Written by the team of Patrick Casey and Worm Miller (who, the
production notes inform us, began their collaboration in the 1980s
in juvenile detention hall—who says our education system is
failing?), the lame comedy revolves around a group of college
students spending a semester abroad at a university housed in an
ancient castle in the dark heart of Translyvania.
Led by a three-foot-tall dean (David J. Steinberg) and staffed with
a faculty of menacing figures, including a bevy of topless
vampiresses, the school's horrific curriculum well reflects its
atmosphere.
The students—including a pair of stoners constantly looking to
"avoid stress"; a pair of sisters, one uptight and the other a
slut; a nebbish looking forward to meeting his beautiful Romanian
Internet girlfriend, who turns out to be a humpback; and a would-be
vampire slayer—find themselves caught up in a battle with the
undead after they accidentally release a vampire king who has been
imprisoned for centuries.
The lame gags, ineptly staged, don't produce anything in the way of
genuine laughs, though there is the occasional funny line. (Two
randy students, attempting to follow the guidelines of an ancient
sex manual, complain that it's like "reading Ikea instructions.")
The movie does offer evocative visuals thanks to the use of
atmospheric locations in, where else, Romania.
Filmgoers interested in this sort of thing would be well-advised to
skip
Translymania and instead wait for the
Twilight
spoofs that inevitably will be coming our way.
-
Nielsen Business Media
Film Review: Transylmania
Lame vampire spoof has no bite.
Dec 7, 2009
-By Frank Scheck
For movie details, please click here.
For those of you who have been desperately awaiting the latest comic opus from David and Scott Hillenbrand, the creators of
National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze and its sequel
National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2: College @ Sea, well, the suspense is over. The director-producer brothers have brought you
Transylmania, the latest in what will no doubt be—thanks to the onslaught of vampires that have been lately populating movie and television screens—an endless onslaught of bloodsucker spoofs.
Hopefully, some of them will be better than this one and
Stan Helsing, which recently made a brief pit stop in theatres before being shipped off to video stores.
Written by the team of Patrick Casey and Worm Miller (who, the production notes inform us, began their collaboration in the 1980s in juvenile detention hall—who says our education system is failing?), the lame comedy revolves around a group of college students spending a semester abroad at a university housed in an ancient castle in the dark heart of Translyvania.
Led by a three-foot-tall dean (David J. Steinberg) and staffed with a faculty of menacing figures, including a bevy of topless vampiresses, the school's horrific curriculum well reflects its atmosphere.
The students—including a pair of stoners constantly looking to "avoid stress"; a pair of sisters, one uptight and the other a slut; a nebbish looking forward to meeting his beautiful Romanian Internet girlfriend, who turns out to be a humpback; and a would-be vampire slayer—find themselves caught up in a battle with the undead after they accidentally release a vampire king who has been imprisoned for centuries.
The lame gags, ineptly staged, don't produce anything in the way of genuine laughs, though there is the occasional funny line. (Two randy students, attempting to follow the guidelines of an ancient sex manual, complain that it's like "reading Ikea instructions.") The movie does offer evocative visuals thanks to the use of atmospheric locations in, where else, Romania.
Filmgoers interested in this sort of thing would be well-advised to skip
Translymania and instead wait for the
Twilight spoofs that inevitably will be coming our way.
-
Nielsen Business Media
