Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant – Movie Review
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is a movie about Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), a teenager who with a friend attends a mysterious freak show where it turns out the freaks are really supernatural in nature. Through a course of events he winds up having to become the assistant to a vampire (John C. Reilly), becoming half-vampire himself in the process and joining the Cirque to save his best friend’s life. But his best friend may not be such a great person after all.
The movie is directed by Paul Weitz (American Pie, American Dreamz) and written by Weitz and Brian Helgeland (Salt, Conspiracy Theory). It is based on the first three books
I had wanted to see this movie ever since I saw the trailer for it. It looked like it was funny and had an interesting plot. I did some research and found out it was based on a series of books and actually started reading the first one. I put it down however as it was really written for a young audience and was too overly simplified for me. I still wanted to see this movie though, but unfortunately it’s not until now that I got a chance to do so. This was supposed to be the first in a series of movies (there are 12 books and I believe the plan was to make that into 4 films) but it did very poorly at the box office so I doubt there are plans for the sequel.
After watching the movie I understand why it did so bad at the box office. It straddles two different worlds first it’s based on a young adult book, but it’s really for the the youngest of young adults (the book at least) and the film tries to keep some of that but also randomly gets more adult and starts throwing out a few curse words (super mild ones, but still enough to earn the film a PG-13 which probably killed it). It is just such an odd balance that it never really gets right. Which is sad because this was filled with promise, some of which it lived up to.
Despite what I said above I really liked a lot about this movie. All of the performances are wonderful, especially John C. Reilly as Crepsley, the vampire that our protagonist becomes the assistant to, and Michael Cerveris as Mr. Tiny, a supernatural being who is set on creating a war between two types of vampires merely so he can watch it seems. Reilly brings a lot to his role and makes the character funny and very human. The vampires here aren’t some crazy thing, they’re a lot more human and Reilly really sells being alive for 200 years and the loneliness that comes with that.
I also really loved the world of this movie and wished I could spend more time in it. The Cirque universe is really interesting and I would have loved to have dived even deeper into it. It’s also beautiful. The set dressing and cinematography are both wonderful and really create this great aesthetic.
Unfortunately like I said they planned this to be the first part of a series (sort of a vampiric Harry Potter if you will) and because of that the ending isn’t very satisfactory because it’s basically a lead in to what was supposed to be the next movie. This was basically the origin story, not the whole story.
Overall though I do think that young teens, maybe ever 11 and 12 year olds might really enjoy this. The only things in here for parents to possibly object to are a couple uses of “shit” and I think one “ass” and a completely non bloody nor even violent scene where Jane Krakowski’s character has her arm bitten off by a wolfman, but then re-grows it. Your kids have probably seen much worse on tv. I’d also recommend this to adults who will appreciate the nuance and subtlety Reilly puts onscreen.
It comes out on DVD
It is also available on 
and through the NBC/Universal Store in both Blu-ray and DVD:
