Queen Of The Damned (Wide Screen) > Reviews > Anne Rice...Queen Of The B Movies

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Advantages:	unintentionally funny
Disadvantages:	not scary, not sexy, not clever, Lestat is gay now?

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles are a worldwide phenomenon, attracting readers from all age groups and all backgrounds and cultures. Her army of fans is enormous and many would defend these novels with their lives. When it was announced that Interview with the Vampire, the first in the Vampire Chronicles, was to be made into a movie it was met with a mixed reaction. When prettyboys Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise were chosen for the two leads role then it was met with many howls of discontent. Anne Rice herself expressed a dislike over the choices, claiming she wanted perfection made from her precious novels...and it turned out to be a damn fine movie. Anne Rice was pleased, the majority of fans were pleased(can't please everyone), plenty of non-book fans loved it and became fans of the series and the movie world in particular was happy. There was a long gap between that movie and the next adaptation in the series which would be "Queen of the Damned", someone having made the choice to skip over the second book in favour of this one, so at least it didn't look like they rushed one out as a knee jerk reaction to the previous movie's success. Movie fans and fans of the series awaited the movie with bated breath...

...and you are all about to be let down horribly. Queen of the Damned is an awful movie, made even more awful by the fact that firstly, it ought to be so much better considering its source material, secondly it doesn't even look as if any attempt was made to make it any better when they knew they could play on the source material and thirdly, most importantly in my eyes, it feels very much like Anne Rice has tried very hard to spin a line of bull to her fans in order to milk the Vampire Chronicles for a little more cash. Her official statement on seeing the movie :

"QUEEN OF THE DAMNED is an energetic and innovative rendition of the Vampire Chronicles, featuring fine performances, and a magnificent look. Well directed, elegant and intriguing, the film is surely destined to take its place among notable modern interpretations of vampire mythology"

Interesting how her standards have lowered so enormously over the past years, the general consensus, not just my own on seeing this aneamic offering is that it is at best a disappointment, at worst a travesty! I'm no a huge fan of the novels, so 'travesty', 'sacrilege' etc. are words I won't be bandying around, but cr*p, boring, lifeless, campy and worst of all *MTV* are words I might. I'll give you my take on the sorry affair first and then balance Anne Rice's marvelous description with a few other critical snippets from those who have seen it and watched without the dollar signs obscuring their vision.

Alarm bells should really have started ringing when it was let slip that the movie was destined for a straight to video release as it neared completion. Even the studio Warner Brothers could see its distinct lack of potential, despite carrying the Anne Rice name and being a sequel to the highly successful Interview With The Vampire. Rather iffily, the only thing which nudged it towards the cinema screens again was the unfortunate death of Aaliyah in a plane crash last year or straight to video is no doubt where it would have gone...and certainly where it belongs. I haven't read the book, I find Anne Rice to be somewhat over-bloated in parts and her attempts to humanise the inhuman, turning the undead into tortured anti-heroes, is a lttle more than I can stomach, but apparently according to all sources this movie completely butchers its source material. That not hard to imagine when you watch, because if the books were quite this bad then I'm sure they wouldn't have the following they have. Or at least I would hope not.

Queen of the Damned opens with a monolgue from Lestat, detailing how he tired of walking the Earth alone and decided to sleep instead, until he is awaked by a world which is changed - a world where new gods are worshipped - rock musicians(!). He rises from the grave(talk about music loud enough to wake the dead) and forms his own band. He is tired of walking in shadows, hiding his existence and so instead openly proclaims his vampirism, admitting he drinks blood and of course he becomes an immediate media mega-star. He attracts the attention of millions and the other vampires are less than happy about his high profile except one - the Queen Of The Damned, an ultra-powerful vampire who has just been resurrected from statue form by Lestat's music and wants him for her cosort. She must vie with a human in the form of Jesse, a student of all things 'arcane' who also wants Lestat's affections and gets them...and umm, to be honest its all very confusing, incoherent and perhaps its better if you have read the two books upon which this is loosely based first!!

I remember when the first movie came out and everyone was whinging and whining about how Tom Cruise could never be 'Lestat', what an awful choice he was and how horrible the whole movie would be because of his casting. I did read Interview with a Vampire and someone like Cruise seemed the perfect choice to me, someone like Stuart Townsend didn't when I heard about the new movie casting. Its always a bad sign with sequels when the original cast members take a look at the script and balk at the idea of appearing in the movie. Sometimes they are just busy - most times its because the movie is bloody awful and sadly this would be one of those times. Stuart Townsend is whingey. He is whiney. He is camp, effemitate, absurd and ludicrous - a cross between Marilyn Manson and Julian Carey and about as watchable for two hours as that hybrid would be. His performance is horrible and would crush a movie no matter how good the rest of it might be. This movie only made it onto the cinema screens because of Aaliyah's death, but if its meant to be something of a tribute to her then perhaps it would have been kinder to have not given the movie such a high profile - or even released it at all. A fitting tribute would have ben to have re-released her debut Romeo Must Die where she gave a credible performance, but here she is abysmal. Hers is a horribly over the top performance of eye-rolling fang-baring snarling and umm boogying-down(!) which in some ways makes her hugely enjoyable to watch for the unintentional(and frequent!) laugh out loud moments which the performance brings. As an ancient Queen of Egypt who along with her king almost drained the world population dry of blood she comes across as rather less than evil, rather less than regal and distinctly umm...hilarious for the very short time she is in the movie, bizarrely(considering the title) she gets around 5/10 minutes of screen time, if that! Given the ludicrous performances of these two then its odd to see Paul McGann play the whole thing totally straight-laced and Jesse portrayed so wimpishly.

Watching Queen Of The Damned you might get the impresion that you have stumbled into "MTV Presents...Queen Of The Damned" instead of the real thing and you would be forgiven for thinking that the mess is the result of a music director stumbling into the world of movie making but of course you would be wrong on both counts. Director Michael Rhymer has no excuse for making this drivel, his previous offering some seven years previously actually having shown a little flair and expertise. Obviosuly 7 years is long enough to forget such things, because this movie is virtually devoid of any intelligent film-making. Flashy quick cuts, swirling colours, rock star oppulent sets and blazing light shows might be the kind of thing you expect from a rock video, but a good movie they do not make. Its not so much headache inducing as jaw-droppingly wrong, misplaced, mis-conceived and just bloody well cr*p! The idea of a rock star vampire is pretty bizarre anyway, no doubt Anne Rice's skills as an author managed to pull the idea through but the movie doesn't fare at all well. The attempts to take two rather hefty novels in the form of The Vampire Lestat and Queen Of The Damned and translate them into just one short movie was probably always doomed to failure anyway but surely no one expected it to be this bad? The modern day vampire is tortured and dakly seductive, overtly sexual and alluring yet 'tortured' here is translated as 'whiney' and sexuality means shoving the vampires in tight leather trousers and open shirts and the vampiresses in short skirts, fishnets and such-like. Such is the artistry which has gone into this production, surely Anne Rice is better than a B-movie product? Maybe not. It doesn't help much when Townsend tries to do 'sexy' and it comes across as 'feminine' either.

Perhaps its because I am not an avid fan of the novels that I found the whole thing rather difficult to follow as well. Oh sure, it moves in something of a linear direction, but too many times I sat there thinking "why?", "what?" and "what the fork?!?". Undoubtedly this is the result of grabbing up two large books and condensing them into one movie which is more concerned with its set design and soundtrack than sticking to the source material. Its not that the movie 'lost me' as such, its just that the whys and wherefores are no doubt only going to be picked up on by fans. Having read some other reviews though it seems that fans are going to be less than pleased with some of the liberties taken by those involved with the creation of this movie as well, much of the original source material has been cut away, slashed, modified and generally it appears, butchered in the production of the final result. The only thing which the movie may have going for it is the pumping rock soundtrack - if of course you like pumping rock soundtracks. Townsend on stage is a lttle better than Townsend offstage but ultimately if you wanted to watch a rock act with as much balls as Creed and the theatrics of KISS then (you need help) you'd pick up a music video not an alleged vampire horror flick.

Queen of the Damned is not a good movie. Watching it you are likely to find yourself hacked off at having forked out cold hard cash for the experience or to be found tittering to yourself at some of the more ludicruous set pieces or horrendous dialogue. I gave it two stars for the latter, because after the initial shock at how pants it all is, it did make me laugh on more than a few occasions. Perhaps if the production team had played more in this direction then the movie could have been much more enjoyable. As it stands, its B-movie trash made slightly distasteful by Warner Brothers' holding it back to cash in on Aaliyah's death.

Other quotes as promised...sorry Anne:

~Boston Globe~

"... merely mediocre ..."

~E! Online~

"... this movie doesn't just suck, it blows."

~L.A. Weekly~

"...a ludicrous attempt to combine two densely plotted Anne Rice novels into one film"

~New York Daily News ~

"... somewhat campy vampire trifle ... "

~New York Times~

"Just Say No to Blood."

~Salon~

"It goes on forever."

~San Francisco Chronicle~

"... pointless and silly ..."

~Seattle Times~

"Damned by bad vampire music and worse vampire acting."

~TV Guide~

"... a whole lot of story got lost between the page and the screen.

~USA Today~

"... damns audience to eternal boredom."

~Washington Post~

"... dramatically anemic."

I think that redresses the balance somewhat. I did find a couple of positive quotes, but not one single 5 star review anywhere and those who said it was good were not only few and far between, but seemed to say it was good because it was campy, MTV-ish and the kind of thing which I would say makes it BAD! Queen of the Damned is naff, but its not only naff but also not scary, not sexy, not funny, not "Anne Rice" and ultimately and worst of all, its crushingly dull! Give it a wide berth at the cinemas.