I'll be damned

Walking into the theatre, waiting almost 30 minutes through stupid advertising, movies trailers I don't plan on watching (the summer is going to suck), and stepping in a puddle of spilled soda, and what do I get? A mediocre movie.

A few "who are these people?" actors, a brilliant soundtrack (not the score, which was lame), and a plot totally outside any preconceived vampirical storyline made this a mindblowing movie.

Too bad I was asleep through the first hour and a half.

Warning, though, I reveal the entire movie in this review, so if you don't wanna know, give me a good rating and leave, please.

This movie, supposedly a sequel to the movie "Interview with the Vampire", is based around the vampire Lestat (again), played by Irishman Stuart Townsend of no real known fame, who awakens after a couple centuries and decides to join a heavy metal band, much to the dismay of gothics who go out of their way to pretend to be vampires.

After making a single CD, earning lots of fame in mere weeks, much to the dismay of just about every band alive who has worked almost their entire lives to get half famous, Lestat gets set up for a gigantic concert, whose tickets sell for $200 a pop, but when the actual concert goes down, no one is taking tickets anyways, so what was the point in selling them?

We then learn Lestat's past, which totally differs from the "Interview with the Vampire" setup, but we can look past that, which includes being turned by vampire Marius, played by Vincent Perez, who played in The Crow II, and even directed a bunch of French films, simply to teach Marius, who has been around since 600BC how to be hip and popular in 17th century France.

As Lestat learns more about being a vampire, including how to make his eyes glow, which is popular Damned thoroughfare, he finds a secret passage to a place where two statues sit quietly. Having recently learned to play the violin, he gives the female statue a beautiful serenade that sounded specifically "Gypsidic" and Far Easterner, though they were in the Mediterranean. The statue, obviously impressed, or very bored, offers herself to him, giving him her wrist to drink from.

YAWN, it turns out the statue is Akasha, a character beautifully played by Aaliyah, god rest her soul, in her first movie debut, excluding Romeo Must Die, which I thought was a vampire movie, too, since it sucked so terribly.

Marius gets mad at Lestat, ties him down, and takes off with the statues, who were later described as Akasha and her king, who ruled Egypt, and consumed thousands of people, and growing tired of drinking blood, which does get boring really fast, I should know, they decide to become statues.

Four hundred years later, Lestat has his own band, which really isn't that bad simply because Korn's Johnathan Davis produced almost every song, and passed them out to rocking musicians like Dry Cell, Marilyn Manson, and Wayne Static of Static X. Even though she was nestled under ground and was a statue, she must have downloaded the MP3 of the songs and decided to come back to life and kill the vampires who were planning on killing Lestat, because Lestat was using his music to tell us humans the vampire secrets, which when listening to the songs, were stupid secrets, like where all the good vampire clubs were.

Some girl, played by some girl, member of the Talamasca, decided that since her life should be devoted to finding Lestat and becoming a vampire, which is a strange coincidence because her aunt Maharet was a vampire, played by Lena Olin, who played in crappy movie Ninth Gate. That movie really sucked.

The Talamasca is a group of people who study vampires, even though a few were vampires, I thought, because at the end, like 8 or 9 vampires just appear willing to help her. That is part of the plot I couldn't figure out. The leader of the Talamasca, David Talbot, played by Paul McGann, star of short films, and I do mean short films, like TV show short. He had a huge collection of Marius' art work, and even owned the journal that Jesse has used to learn about Lestat.

Yada yada yada, she gets Lestat to fall in love with her, kinda, even though I would never pass up getting two chics a night for a boring old girl who I don't even know.

Marius comes back to Lestat, after 400 years, and Lestat shows him a good time. Marius tells Lestat that Akasha has been awakened. She has decided to forget about going straight to find Lestat to visiting the Swinging Arms or whatever the place was called, and kill everyone there.

The time for the concert was there, and they came on, and played a few songs, and they made sure that we were sure who the vampires were that were going to kill Lestat, because they stood still and had shiny eyes. After the first song, Lestat sings a song that taunts those trying to kill him, and then they attack. Marius shows up to help out, and after killing a few vampires, they get surrounded by like 20.

Ok, in Interview With The Vampire, the troupe tells Brad Pitt that it is a major sin to kill another vampire, and thus banished the girl and her keeper to death.

But in this movie, it is noble to kill another vampire. Which happens alot, especially by Akasha, who appears to save Lestat, by incinerating a bunch of vampires, and then grabbing Lestat and flying away to their little island.

After some sexual blood drinking sex, the good kind of sex, he wakes up to find that he is immune to the sun, even though he is hung over, so it burns his eyes worse than if he were simply a vampire. He cruises to find out that even though Akasha slept for over a millenium because she was bored of drinking blood, that she was up to her old tricks and cleaned up about 100 in one night.

Across the earth, in the Mojave desert, Maharat, Jesse the unknown girl, Marius, and a few other vampires get together to discuss how to kill Akasha, when Akasha appears, ears burning, and forces Lestat to drink Jesse's blood, who then dies.

The vampire war happens, with everyone throwing themselves onto Akasha, who does her part to incinerate a few of them, and fails miserably. Lestat attempts to drink her dry, which takes her death into him and would kill him, when Maharat decides that the best way to protect the family that she has been protecting for a million years, is to drink Aaliyah's last drop, which kills her in a nice display of action, and then Maharat pusses out and turns to stone rather than suffer a true "vampire who killed another vampire" death.

Lestat then gives dead girl Jesse some of his blood, and she becomes a vampire, which is later evident, when they visit their old friend David to give him back Lestat's journal, by the overuse of eye makeup and by walking really slow.

The movie wasn't all that bad, if you had the attention span of a redwood tree, which I don't, so I went to watch some porn movies in another theatre and came back to watch the ending.

Aaliyah played a great role, looking all fine in her bronze body paint, and wiggling as she walked. You don't care how bad of an actress she might have been because you are transfixed by her little stomach and shaking booty, but thats just me.

The rest of the people simply had to wear black and fake teeth to fulfill their roles.