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88A sense of anachronism is what provides the film with its melancholy heart.
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83A surprisingly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek New York comedy from "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling, Vamps teeters on the brink of not quite working and yet still routinely lands its laughs.
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Nov 7, 201270Heckerling always manages to get her finger firmly on the pulse of the contemporary moment, and while her club-hopping heroines may be undead, they serve as adorable metaphors for what the filmmaker sees as a zombified moment in cultural history.
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67Heckerling also struggles woefully with special effects, but even then, she's capable of pulling off a beautiful sequence where Silverstone remembers a specific city block as it's evolved through the ages. Her shambling little comedy never finds a consistent groove, but it's eager to please, and has the ancient gags to do it.
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60Charming at times but surprisingly cheap-feeling given the cast Heckerling has assembled.
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Nov 2, 201260Make no mistake, Vamps is mostly a misfire, but Heckerling still shows enough flashes of wit and wisdom that she remains hard to entirely dismiss. Don't bury that coffin just yet.
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50Reteaming with Silverstone, the alpha matchmaker of "Clueless," for Vamps, Heckerling uses the actress as the mouthpiece for her complaints about how dumb everyone is today. The writer-director's nostalgia feeds the laziest type of cultural critique: never piercing, just grumpy.
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40Aging is probably the real theme here, but it's approached sidelong and has no punch. Still, only the nostalgia has any real conviction.
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40Vamps is commendable, even moving, as a raw-nerve confession of anachronism - but it's also what keeps this strained satire from drawing any real blood.