Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
not quite Buffy, 26 Mar 2002
By A Customer
althought not as good as the series with Sarah Michelle Geller it is still quite good. full of comic moments and pull on the heart strings type stuff too, so good all round. The best thing is of course is that it tells the beginning of the whole deal for Buffy, something which, in my opinion, is a bit sketchy in the series so a good watch just for that. But is also quite funny, especially the vamps (weird looking with huge ears!!)
Watch it as a background to the series, and of course if you are a major fan you have to know how it all started.
Watch out for the longest death scene of a vamp ever (they don't turn to dust in the film) and the stars in small parts, see if you can get them all!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent enough, but no match for the series, 1 Mar 2007
Before it was a top quality television series, Buffy The Vampire Slayer existed only in the form of this somewhat insubstantial film. Kristy Swanson plays cheerleader Buffy, an air headed L.A. teenager who discovers she has been chosen to defend the world from the undead scourge. She is trained by Watcher Donald Sutherland to fight off the Dracula-like Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his army of goofy blood-sucking assistants (including Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens).
Think of it as Clueless with comedy vampires.
With the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious that the makers of this one have missed most of the potential in Joss Whedon's screenplay, choosing to make a full-blown comedy with non-threatening vampires and none of the emotional resonance that would make its way into the TV version. It's as though they read the title, laughed at how daffy it was, and took the cheerleading vampire killer concept at face value. One of Whedon's real skills is to take an idea that seems utterly ridiculous and make you care about it, mostly by creating believable characters and pouring on the emotion, but that's not the route they've taken with this one.
Taken on its own terms, though, this is not the terrible stinker its reputation suggests. It's not a classic, either, but it's enjoyable enough if you can set your thoughts of Willow, Xander, Giles, et al to one side. Swanson is an engaging (not to mention beautiful) lead, there are some funny moments, and Reubens and David Arquette are clearly having a lot of fun hamming it up as vampires. Future oscar winner Ben Affleck even turns up for a few seconds.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer is hardly essential viewing, but it's not a total waste of time, and it's also an interesting curio for fans of the T.V. show.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A good start spoilt by a farsical end, 6 Jun 2007
This film started off quite well and could have been a decent movie. But after an entertaining first half, the movie descended into a farce that was an insult to the intelligence of the viewer.
The first two thirds of the film was quite good and I was initially asking myself why the film had been failed so badly. All seemed good, Kirsty Swanson makes a good portrayal of Buffy and the vampires are portrayed effectively as the evil malicious creature of the night that they are. The story explains effectively how Buffy is transformed from a care free materialistic teenager into a Slayer, showing all the psychological and physical conflicts that this involves. The atmosphere and physical world in the film is not quite the same as in the series. There is less humour and the vampires are slightly different. For instance, vampires can levitate, do not have bumpy foreheads and do not turn to dust when they die. However, none of this spoils the movie in any way and I was quite enjoying it up to about two thirds of the way through. Then it became a farce.
One thing that characterises most of the Buffy series, is that it takes itself seriously. The characters are supposed to be real people in a real world. There is comedy and humour, but it never spoils the sense of reality that is portray to the viewer. It is this sense of reality that is lost in the second half of the movie. For some reason, the whole atmosphere of the movie changes and it becomes much more light-hearted. Suddenly, all the vampires think they are comedians and start acting stupid in a pathetic attempt to be funny. This embarrassing attempt at comedy not only fails to be amusing in any way, but also spoils the dark image of the vampires as malicious blood sucking monsters that was built up successfully in the first half of the film. This completely ruined my enjoyment of the film.
Also, the final battle scenes are just plain stupid, with the vampires seemingly more intent on cracking second rate unfunny jokes rather than attacking people. In one case, one vampire is even able to sing a little song when he is staked by Buffy. The action at the end is completely unfulfilling as the main battle scene between Buffy and the vampires is not even shown. All we get is a scene showing a lot of dead vampires and supposedly amusing dialogue to inform us that Buffy indeed killed them all. This was a shame, because the action was decent, if sparse, up until then.
In conclusion, this film could have been decent if it wasn't for the ending. But unfortunately, the poor ending managed to spoil any good work that was done earlier in the movie.
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