Film reviews

Tagline – Drink From Me And Live Forever

There were three questions that I asked myself upon beginning this review: How does one begin to review a movie so appallingly bad as Interview with the Vampire? Why did it have to be this way when the book itself isn’t half-bad? And why did I waste two hours on watching this tripe?

The visuals in this film are extremely sumptuous and the costumes obviously keep to the various periods under discussion (e.g. luxuriant silks and satins for Louis XVI’s court, suit and tie for present-day Los Angeles, etc.). Kirsten Dunst as Claudia is charmingly evil; Stephen Rea as Santiago is competently cruel. Unfortunately, the two main protagonists bring this picture to a crashing halt. I can no more imagine Brad Pitt as Louis de Pointe du Lac than I can imagine him as Achilles, no more can I imagine Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt than I can imagine him as the Top Gun or as the hero of Mission: Impossible.

Spoiler Just one scene in this movie stands out for me, and if you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not missing much, so please read on. The first scene I have in mind occurs in the days of Louis XVI, when the crowd finds out that Louis (no relation to Louis XVI) and his family are vampires. At this point they drag Brad Pitt into a coffin and hammer it shut, while putting his wife and daughter in a jail cell to wait for sunlight. Brad Pitt escapes from his coffin and rushes to free his family – only to find out he’s too late and they’ve turned to ashes. There are two very glaring problems here: vampires are supposedly extremely good at mind control. It’s, after all, what they do best. Why on earth would they reveal to a crowd of extras that they’re vampires? Failing that, vampires are alleged to be extremely strong. They’d have to be in order to overwhelm their victims. Since this is so, surely Brad Pitt could simply burst out of his coffin much sooner – or his wife and child could burst out of their cell before they’re turned to dust. But I suppose dramatic causality must take precedence over logic. Oh well.

While Brad Pitt gives a slightly believable performance as the pouting and moping Louis – I kept expecting him to go Goth at any moment and paint his fingernails black – Tom Cruise is a comically over-the-top villain as Lestat. As such, both of them simply ruined the movie for me.