Thursday, August 19, 2010

Suck Doesn't Suck

Not a week after seeing Floria Sigismundi's incredibly stylish rock biopic THE RUNAWAYS -- no, I mean incredibly stylish -- we watched Rob Stefaniuk's musical vampire comedy SUCK. Rob stars as the leader of a band with a problem: they suck. Fortunately, their bassist, effervescently deadpan Jessica ParĂ©, gets bitten and turns into a vampire. Suddenly, they don't suck any more. Except that they, you know, suck.

Rob clearly had a lot of fun with this picture, and not just with the cameos by Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins. The "band is travelling" sequences are stop-motion animation with miniatures because, I dunno, why not. Rob has a lot of fun with fast-motion and weird color corrects and such.

Oh, and Malcolm McDowell's the vampire hunter. Complete with a series of flashbacks to 1970's Malcolm McDowell, by cleverly editing bits of some 1970's Malcolm McDowell movie. Nicely done, Rob.

And, oh, the movie is funny. And stylish. And funny:

3 comments:

Tim W. said...

From the guys who brought you Epic Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and possibly the worst movie ever made, Disaster Movie. Your review makes it sound good, but it's currently sitting at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and the lineage doesn't excite me in the least.

Alex Epstein said...

@Tim: You're thinking of VAMPIRES SUCK (2010). This is SUCK (2009). 7.0 on the IMDb. 57% fresh on Rottentomatoes.com (not every critic likes rock musicals about vampires).

Tim W. said...

Oh, that makes much more sense. The trailer certainly did not look like it was by "those guys" and made it look pretty good. Thanks.

As for Rotten TOmatoes, I've found anything above 50% has a chance to be a good movie, even if their fresh rating is 60% and above.