Who doesn’t remember Dwight Frye as Renfield, Dracula’s mad bug-eating batman in the creaky old Bela Lugosi/Tod Browning 1931 classic. Brought front-and-center in this Chris McKay campy vampy comic gore-fest, it’s more false advertizing than backstory, a Martial Arts/Superhero CGI blood-bath, the humor all nudge-nudge/wink-wink as Renfield tries to get Drac out of his system with Group Therapy sessions; bonds with the cop investigating drug trade murders & police corruption Renfield’s been drawn into; and busy hunting up tasty bugs to activate previously unknown superpowers. Cue the usual CGI effects. What any of this has to do with the Drac/Ren relationship is tenuous at best, more important, largely humorless as presented. (The one good joke gives main villain Ben Schwartz the same hair that kid vampire had in THE MUNSTERS.) Nicolas Cage waited his whole life for a chance to play Dracula. He should have waited a bit longer. Awkwafina needs more directorial help than she gets as the one ‘clean’ cop while Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield goes from Goth to Hugh Grant after a grooming. (He’s gets the vocal inflections, but not the floppy hair of prime ‘90s Grant.) On the other hand, as a putative franchise it lost enough money to put a stake thru its heart.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Just like Fredric March in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE/’31, Cage has some difficulty talking thru his oversized teeth.
DOUBLE-BILL: How many ‘funny’ Dracula movies are there? (And are any of them funny?) LOVE AT FIRST BITE/’79, a Mel Brooks wannabe was dumb, but a game George Hamilton pretty good casting, no? Brooks’ try, DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT/’95, bad enough to end his film directing career.
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