At the Bloggies

Ebert: Hello, welcome back to At The Bloggies, I'm Roger Ebert and with me as always is Richard Roeper.

Roeper: We just saw the end of Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator's Count Vampire saga, and I have to say I was very unimpressed by this outing.

Ebert: You got that right, Richard. If he's an Intergalactic Gladiator, what's he doing on Earth fighting vampires? It doesn't make sense. Shouldn't he be fighting space monsters or something?

Roeper: Exactly, I thought exactly the same thing, and the only time he fights a space monster is when he's fighting a space vampire. How does a vampire survive in space?

Ebert: Space vampires, art school kids getting beat up, hiring vampires on the Internet? This plotline was incoherent at best.

Roeper: Those poor kids. Some people have real issues and it looked to me that when they were all reaching out for help, Jon just kicks them around and threatens them.

Ebert: And the dialog! When he's ripping off lines from the Batman movie, it just seems like a desperate grab.

Roeper: You're right. Jon's supposed to be a much more colorful and out-there character than some brooding Batman type. He really missed on that one. There was one line that I liked, though.

Ebert: Which was?

Roeper: Jon meets this Renée Zellweger-esque vampire and he says hello then stabs her in the heart. They tussle some, then she says "You had me at hello" and crumbles away. I wish more of it had that pop culture cleverness and comedic timing.

Ebert: I think you ruined it by over-explaining it.

Roeper: Too bad. I had problems with Hudson's character as well. He was very inconsistent, first he was a tough, Gung Ho stand-up Marine guy, then he's cowering from Dracula all afraid and everything.

Ebert: I thought that worked for him. It created a depth to the character that we hadn't seen before. Originally, I thought he was just a gun-crazed nutbag, but now I see there's more to him than that.

Roeper: Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

Ebert: I don't agree to that.

Roeper: OK, it missed something else as well.

Ebert: Yeah, it would have been nice to see Vampirella or something. Maybe Angelina Jolie could have played the part.

Roeper: Oh yeah, I'd pay to see that. But you're right, though, the story really was missing a love interest or some kind of a strong female lead. Where was Jon's wife? Where was Hudson's girlfriend or something?

Ebert: As I understand it, Jon's wife refuses to participate in his blog.

Roeper: Good for her. I would too, if I were her.

Ebert: If I were to give Jon credit for one thing, I guess it would be that the showdown at Dracula's castle was pretty good. The action was decent and it was a nice suprise that Dracula wasn't really the one who sent the letter.

Roeper: Eh. I did like the action at the castle, but I just couldn't buy the plot twist though. Oh, you shot up my castle, but I didn't send the letter, OK goodbye.

Ebert: OK, to wrap it up, Jon tries to deliver a nice story but it just doesn't quite hit the high watermark that he's established in earlier efforts. Some of the locations, like Transylvania, are nice, but the action sequences are pedestrian and the plot just doesn't quite deliver. Jon is Jon though, and you can see that there's almost something there. I give it a very mild thumbs up.

Roeper: A mild thumbs down for me. Hopefully, his next effort is better.