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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Vampires Suck (Christopher Lennertz)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're still searching for the perfect sound for
The Twilight Saga, ironically captured by Christopher Lennertz in
this intelligent guilty pleasure of a parody.
Avoid it... if you simply can't disengage your brain long enough to appreciate the predictable and overblown reliance on cliches that saturates every moment of this easily digestible dessert.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Vampires Suck: (Christopher Lennertz) Given how
ripe the teenage vampire genre's crown jewel, The Twilight Saga,
has become for lampooning, it's surprising that veteran satire writers
and directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer seem to have missed
their opportunity to really impale the idiocy of that franchise with
much skill in Vampires Suck. Then again, the 2010 comedy was
trying to parody a concept that is inherently so laughably juvenile in
its original form that perhaps their task was impossible. Defying as
usual the absolutely horrid critical response that these films often
receive, Vampires Suck made a brief splash at the box office and
has earned about the average gross for past Friedberg/Seltzer comedies
like Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie. The duo takes
almost all of their characters and plot elements from The Twilight
Saga, leaving most of the names and general events intact but
incorporating a major gag into each scene. Continuing his collaboration
with Friedberg and Seltzer is composer Christopher Lennertz, whose
career has thankfully crept further into the mainstream after producing
impressive music in relative obscurity over the better part of the
2000's. Emerging from his toils with television series and video games
is a budding feature film career defined by comedy music for (sometimes
very fiscally successful) titles like Alvin and the Chipmunks,
Marmaduke, and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,
the latter two joining Vampires Suck as part of a busy 2010
summer season for the composer. His music for Meet the Spartans
in 2008 is a guilty pleasure of the highest order, a work that continues
to impress in its clever pokes at the topic's established sound. As
always, the point of satirical scores like Meet the Spartans and
Disaster Movie is to play the film as if it was completely
serious, therefore advancing the effectiveness of each joke. This opens
worlds of opportunity for any composer, allowing genre stereotypes in
music to be exploited in all their glory without any worry of plagiarism
lawsuits. Additionally, by bloating the genre's sound to nearly
overblown proportions, an entertaining listening experience on album can
also result. Such is the case with Vampires Suck once again,
another score that requires you to turn off your brain to appreciate the
fact that it's arguably more effective than the actual scores for The
Twilight Saga. Whereas the rotating composers for those films have
never been able to truly nail down the musical identity of the
franchise, Lennertz does it for them with ease.
It didn't take an abundance of intellectual thought to accomplish this pinnacle of music for the concept, but then again, the franchise and its target audience aren't that musically sophisticated to begin with. But with creative attentiveness to audience expectations, Lennertz really did manage to write the best Twilight score for those who would appreciate it the most. It takes the contemporary, electric-guitar tones of Carter Burwell's original, incorporates the piano lyricism of Alexandre Desplat's sequel, and wraps them in the morbidly orchestral environment of Howard Shore's entry. Its constructs and instrumentation are wickedly appropriate for the topic, and much of this material could be tracked into the real thing without much audience unrest. It does have a downside, however, and it relates to an underpowered sound of the Hungarian orchestral players (especially compared to Debbie Wiseman's all-time favorite vampire spoof score, Lesbian Vampire Killers) and the need for dissonant stingers all the time to accompany sudden punch lines and funny shocks. Despite the deficiencies relating to the ensemble's depth, Lennertz and his crew do a good job of orchestrating the score and spreading its various sounds well enough in the mix to give the final result satisfying texture and attention to detail. The piano is in the forefront (as with Desplat) and electric guitar is used as a sound effect much like in Meet the Spartans. Little electronic whisps, xylophone, and cymbals join the ultra-cliche female vocalist in conveying a sense of wonder and fantasy. Acoustic guitar, contemporary percussive loops, enhanced electric bass, and lighter electric guitar performances lend a sense of coolness to the score. Solo string elements, seemingly electric at times, give the atmosphere a sense of demonic influence. Banging chimes and expansive brass represent the finality of young "Becca"'s choices. The thematic identities in Vampires Suck are dominated by its primary idea (presumably for Becca), stated early and often in many different guises. It receives fully symphonic force right off the bat in "What Would You Do?" and is reprised with even more gravity in "Becca Meets the Family" and "I'm a Killer." In the second half of the latter cue and in "First Kiss," "The Breakup," "Frank Comforts Becca," and "The Final Bite," Lennertz boils the theme down to solo piano backed by lush strings, guitar, or solo violin. While the expressions of this theme may not be as technically impressive as Desplat's music for the same concept, they are more easily digestible. A few secondary thematic elements meander through the score, led by a massive brass representation of the vampires in "What Would You Do?," "Race to Prom," and "Edward Exposed" and a softer idea on piano for Jacob in "Jacob's Crush." With these ingredients, Lennertz offers a score that will sound similar to enthusiasts of Meet the Spartans, but with its two personalities largely divided between the front and back halves of the score. After the opening volley of action, Lennertz's lighter material for character flirtations and contemplations is extremely attractive, the piano and female vocals both alluring in the most simplistic sense. A soothingly flowing romantic motif/rhythm inhabits these early portions, best heard in "Chemistry in Class." The latter half of "Meet the Sullens," "Chemistry in Class," and parts of "I'm a Killer" (among others) present the female vocal solos in a manner even more beautiful that in Meet the Spartans or Lesbian Vampire Killers, taking the eeriness of the later two Scream scores' equivalents and putting an Enya-like spin on them. For comedic melodrama, Lennertz makes the crescendos of harmony in "First Kiss" and "The Breakup" seem to indicate cataclysmic events. The second half of the score contains the action, and this is where Lennertz's material becomes a bit generic and underpowered. Many of these cues would have sounded great had they been afforded the resounding depth that Wiseman was able to record for Lesbian Vampire Killers, because many of them have to rely upon brute force rather than instrumental colors. Group choral accents are surprisingly infrequent, especially after being featured prominently in the opening cue. Still, despite failing to retain as much interest as the romantic side of the score, the sustained action and stinger portions are adequate. As to be expected, perhaps, there are a few nuggets and in-jokes contained in the score that are worth mentioning. Lennertz references his theme to Meet the Spartans (intentionally or not) at about 0:22 into "Something Strange..." and, far more prominently, he uses "Sleepwalking" as a blatant parody of John Williams' Hedwig theme from the Harry Potter franchise. He spends an entire minute playing with the waltz-set progressions of the theme before outwardly expressing it on solo violin. Hints of this idea extend into the opening moments of "I'm a Killer," a good summary track of all the score's major thematic styles and a likely candidate to be nominated for an award as the best single cue of 2010. Also summarizing the score well is the album's conclusion, "The Final Bite," which leaves you with a whimsical restatement of the title theme and farewells from the all the pertinent solo elements. Overall, Lennertz reprises his superior parody skills for Vampires Suck and not only adds yet another guilty pleasure to film music collections (this time on a deserved commercial offering from Lakeshore Records) but also does what Carter Burwell, Alexandre Desplat, and Howard Shore have all failed to do: create the perfect sound for The Twilight Saga. And it once again proves that today's parody scores definitely don't suck. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 52:33
NOTES & QUOTES:
The single-page insert includes a short note from the composer about the score.
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