Wrapping up the day of Vampire Academy posts (check out my recap of the mall tour in Los Angeles here and my recap of the premiere here). Now a spoiler free review of the movie! Read on…

Vampire Academy

Rated:

Rated PG-13 for violence, more about bloody images, find sexual content and language

Directed By:

Mark Waters

Cast:

Zoey Deutch, Danila Kozlovsky, Lucy Fry, Dominic Sherwood, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Hyland, Sami Gayle.

Find the rest on IMDB here.

IMDB Movie Synopsis:

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, half human/vampire, guardians of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discretely within our world. Her legacy is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi. This is her story.

My Review:

I am literally blown away at how well they did with this movie. While it wasn’t absolutely perfect, I thought they did a wonderful job with it.

First off, I wanted to talk about going into the movie with an open mind. I do not say this to scare you, but I honestly think with that attitude, I enjoyed the movie more. I was high on adrenaline, after being on the red carpet and sneaking pictures with cast members in the lobby of the theater, but when I went into the theater, I told myself, “open mind”. And I’m really glad I did. I think there are too many people judging the movie by the stills and the trailer and I think thats detrimental to the success of the film. YA adaptations aren’t doing well in the theaters and unless we go out and support them, they’ll just stop making them.

Oh, one more thing, with the whole “Mean Girls” thing. A lot of people don’t like that they keep putting emphasis on that, but I like it. It has the humor of Mean Girls, which is GREAT. I think it was hilarious and I’ll talk more about that later. But also, like I said, we NEED this movie to do well to get Frostbite and people love Mean Girls and I applaud anything that gets them into the theater.

Okay rant off. That being said, I went in open minded, and also with the reminder that the first book is much more lighthearted than the rest of the series.

I was immediately struck at how well each of the actors understood their characters. I was amazed at how well Zoey was Rose, Danila was Dimitri and so on. I think I was most impressed with Dominic as Christian. Christian is one of the characters that I’ve always loved and I think he rocked it big time. After meeting the cast the day before, and seeing how nice and genuine they were, I was so impressed with how well they knew their characters and how well they portrayed them in the movie. I will now think of most of these actors and actresses when I go to read the book. They just captured them so well.

I also think there was an incredible balance of action and romance. The romance building between Christian and Lissa and the subtle one between Rose and Dimitri were just as how I’d imagine it in the novel. Its important and its there but its not overwhelming. The movie is not wrapped in the romance and I’m okay with that. There was a ton of action. I loved watching both Rose and Dimitri kick some serious ass in this movie. They really did the story of Rose’s return and work to become caught up on her guardian skills so well.

I really think the movie was about the friendship between Rose and Lissa, just as it should be. Vampire Academy is a huge story about friendship and loyalty, and that is definitely what they got. The friendship between Lissa and Rose has its sweet moments, it has the moments where Rose is protective and it has hilarious moments. Its perfect.

Which leads me to one of my favorite parts of the movie: the humor. The chemistry between the actors led to some well-placed lines and me laughing in my seat the whole movie. Myself and the 7 other people I was with were rolling around in our seats, laughing out loud. I’m pretty sure we were the loudest people in the theatre and I wish I knew the casts’ reactions to our reactions haha. It was a VERY funny movie. I really could not stop laughing.

There were minor things that bothered me. I was hoping for a bit more Mason, but if we get Frostbite, I have hopes we’ll get way more Mason. I think I need to rewatch the movies with subtitles because of all the accents haha. Dominic wasn’t too bad because he spoke loud and clear so I got all of his lines, same with Lucy. Danila talked really really low for some reason so sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was hearing what he was saying correctly. He just needed to speak up a bit but he really rocked as Danila. I thought the end scene (I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t read the book) was a little rushed, and the lust charm scene was a bit cheesy but all in all, it was only small details that bothered me and none of them were deal breakers for the movie in the slightest.

And now that I’ve watched the movie, I want to watch the movie again and I want to reread the books again. I’m all obsessed with VA right now haha.

Rating:

4 out of 5

*       *       *       *       *

So get out there this weekend and see this movie! It was SO enjoyable to watch and, as a VA fan, I was incredibly impressed with it. I would love to see more of the series, I would absolutely love to see Frostbite (admittedly because more Zoey Deutch and we could cast Adrian!!!) and the only the way to get sequels for further movies would be to go out and see this one! So go go go go and tell me what you think when you do!