‘Cirque du Freak: Thec” calls to mind Grandpa taking out his dentures and trying to put on a comedy monster show for little kids at Halloween: When he tries to be scary, he’s goofy, but when he tries to be goofy, he’s scary.
An inept fantasy that wants to be a sort of hip Goth legend, the movie tries to build an increasingly cosmic rivalry between two high school friends. Josh Hutcherson of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” is the naughty boy drawn to the dark side.
As the pure-hearted hero who is his opposite number, Chris Massoglia, who sports a fluffy mid-1980s Ralph Macchio haircut, maintains such a slack-jawed blankness throughout that he makes Ashton Kutcher look like Marlon Brando.
After the pair stumble on a freak/monster show in which the star is an aging vampire (John C. Reilly, sporting Ronald McDonald hair and the kind of floor-length coat Prince used to wear), they get wrapped up in a vaguely defined struggle between (well-behaved) vampires and (dastardly) “vampaneze.”
As part of initiating good kid Darren, the vampire fakes the lad’s death, which leaves his parents bereft as the kid happily plays video games inside his coffin. Like many other scenes, this one fails to even establish whether it’s meant to be cool black comedy for fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Beetlejuice.” If so, why show the parents grieving?
Anyway, the special effects scenes and the overwrought acting seem pitched at 5-year-olds. So is the dialogue. Jokes run along the lines of, “You’d think a vampire would know better than to stick his neck out.”
Spirited away with his vampire mentor to live in a freak camp, Darren meets such creatures as a bearded woman (Salma Hayek) whose whiskers grow when she gets turned on, and an alt-rocker (Patrick Fugit) who is a snake boy.
Indie rockers with an evil streak turned out to be a rich source of jokes in this fall’s “Jennifer’s Body,” but this movie can’t figure out what to do with this idea, or with the spaghetti bowl of other characters and story lines. Assorted allies and bad guys (“Mr. Tiny,” “Murtaugh,” “Mr. Tall”) stumble around spouting exposition as not much happens. Even the climactic battle amounts to some desultory fist-fighting.
The movie, based on a series of books and meant to set up sequels, is going to disappear faster than a vampire in daylight. It’s directed by Paul Weitz, whose brother Chris similarly bungled a shot at creating a fantasy franchise with “The Golden Compass.” Maybe these guys should go back to making reality-based comedies.