Beilight - Bite to Supper

It was actually only a matter of time before the currently enormously successful - and particularly lucrative - vampire genre, and especially the "Twilight" series, would become the target of a film parody. That Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, of all people, whose credits include such atrociously unfunny parodies as "My Wife, the Spartans and Me" or the "Date Movie", have taken on the bloodsuckers does not in itself bode well.

The parody's "story"loosely follows the plot of the first two "Twilight" movies: Becca (Jenn Proske) arrives from the big city to the small town of Sporks, where the loner will henceforth live with her father Frank (Diedrich Bader), the local sheriff. On her very first day of school, Becca falls for the mysterious Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter), only to learn a short time later that Edward is a vampire. This makes it nearly impossible for him to satisfy Becca's teenage hormone-fueled needs, fearing he'll lose control of his bloodlust in the process. Murderous vampires haunting Sporks and Edward's sidekick, werewolf Jacob White (Chris Riggi) further complicate the romance between Becca and Edward until it comes to a big showdown at the prom...

"Beilight - Biss zum Abendbrot" is a lot better than its predecessor "My Wife, the Spartans and I", but even here the ratio between successful gags and humorous pipe crepiers is badly unbalanced. For every good laugh, there are at least two moments of terrible embarrassment. Many scenes that are funny in themselves are put to waste by being unnecessarily drawn out and thus robbed of all their comedy.

With what "Beilight - Biss zum Abendbrot" can really score is the cast, which is really well chosen. Jenn Proske, in particular, does a first-rate job of copying Kristen Steward's mannerisms and exaggerating them in a comedic way. By making her role quite serious, it makes it all the more hilarious. For instance, when Becca throws herself on the forest floor and "suffers"after breaking up with Edward, it's no less hilarious than Bella's unspeakable suffering in "New Moon" - only completely intentional.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer don't really prove to be good directors here either. At many moments, one wistfully wonders what this parody would have looked like in the hands of a capable filmmaker. The few really good laughs that "Beilight" has to offer at least show how much comic potential the whole vampire hype has to offer. Too bad that this potential has only been scratched superficially. At least one thing remains in the end: the result could have been much worse. Therefore applies: who Edward and Bella on the nerves and who has laughed at the previous films of the (night) dream team Friedberg and Seltzer, which can take this altogether quite bloodless "Twilight"-parody quite to mind.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp