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Vampire in Brooklyn
1995 - R - 100 Mins.
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| Director: Wes Craven | | | Written By: Eddie Murphy, Vernon Lynch | | Starring: Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett, Allen Payne, John Witherspoon, Jsu Garcia |
| Review by: John Ulmer |
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"Vampire in Brooklyn" is about a Romanian-talking Vampire, who travels to Brooklyn, New York, in search of a half-vampire to be his bride and to continue the species of vampire with.
Eddie Murphy is that vampire, fit with sharp teeth, glowing eyes and a Little Richard haircut. Murphy parades around with a forced and awful Romanian accent, trying to be funny and at the same time scary, but quite frankly it doesn't work. It's not funny, and it isn't scary, making it more of a stupid movie than anything else.
The first ten minutes are clever. Watch as the film presents us with a solid opening that is both humorous and mysterious. Then watch as it soon dissipates, leaving some stupid plot about vampires hindering the film. I can only imagine how much better the film would have been if Murphy had put some more thought into the script when he co-wrote it with his real-life brother. If the entire movie was like the first five, ten minutes or so, I would recommend this film. But given that it instantly loses all originality, humor and interest, and suddenly resorts to stupid gags and darkness, I give this film a low rating.
Horror fans won't like this movie because it's not funny, comedy fans won't like this movie because it isn't funny, and Eddie Murphy fans (all twenty of them!) won't like this movie because Eddie Murphy has better chances at winning the Mr. Olympia rather than convince us he is a Romanian vampire.
I suspect that vampires must contain a kind of animal instinct. Murphy's vampire travels to Brooklyn in search of the last vampire to mate with, but the thought that this vampire might not be attracted to him never crosses his mind. What about courting? I guess vampires don't do that. They sleep, they drink blood, they mate, multiply, and die. This is what Murphy would like us to believe. But if this is true, then why does Murphy act like a human, walk, talk and sing like a human? Okay, he doesn't sing, it just rhymed. But this film's plot is as weak as a trampoline would be with a five-hundred-pound man bouncing on it.
Okay, forgive and forget, I'll buy the idea of a vampire coming to Brookyn in search of a mate, okay, that's fine. But I won't buy the idea that Eddie Murphy is that vampire, that the vampire has a wicked streak of humor (after all, his instincts make him an animal, not one that takes himself and his surroundings lightly), and I definitely won't buy the movie.
After the hour-point, the film starts getting really weird, really dark, and turns from an attempt at comedy to a serious film. Not even a horror film, but more of a religious film. Someone dies in the form of crucifixion. It is as if Murphy, realizing his script was not funny nor scary, started trying to go for symbolic religion in his film. He buried the end of his script in the ancient curses of vampires, and so on and so forth. Murphy contradicts himself so many times, and the script contradicts Murphy so many times, that the film just loses all credibility and, in the end, turns out neither funny, scary, nor entertaining.
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