Wednesday, December 27, 2017

MY SUCKY TEEN ROMANCE (2011) **


A bunch of dorky teens gather at a science fiction convention.  Paul (Patrick Delgado) is a meek grocery store clerk who was recently bitten by a vampire.  He thinks the convention will be the perfect place to blend in while he waits to bite his first potential victim.  Paul meets the adorkable Kate (Elaine Hurt) and they instantly hit it off.  When he leans in for a goodnight kiss, he accidentally bites her on the neck.  (Awkward!)  Kate then calls on her geeky friends, who are all fans of horror movies, to help her find a way to reverse her vampire curse.

My Sucky Teen Romance makes a lot of easy jokes at Twilight’s expense.  It also takes a lot of jabs at geek culture and the sci-fi convention set.  These aren’t exactly pointed observations to be sure, and they aren’t especially funny either.

All of this was done on an obviously low budget with a lot of non-professionals, which is admirable I guess.  However, the convention scenes suffer from the small budget as it looks more like a birthday party than a sci-fi convention.  The amateurish special effects also hinder the horror aspects of the story, making it feel cheap and sloppy.  I could’ve also done without the Scott Pilgrimesque video game sequences.

The actors do what they can, but they just aren’t quite strong enough to carry the film.  It doesn’t help when they are stuck playing cliched nerdy characters.  Seeing disgraced Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles turning up as a so-called vampire expert who calls bloodsuckers “sexy things that are predatory” is a bit odd too.

Hurt gets the best line of the movie when she sums up why she can’t talk to guys:  “Bad things happen when I say words.”

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