Transylmania (2009)

Strong and Moving!

Let's be realistic.

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

All through my viewing of "Transylmania", I kept picking my brain where I knew the names of David and Scott Hillenbrand from. I knew it had to be horror-related, but seriously couldn't place them. Afterwards, upon checking here on this website, it finally made sense! They are the genius minds behind "King Cobra" and "Demon Island". Now, both those movies really sucked but at least they were serious intended horror attempts, whereas "Transylmania" is a spoof of the genre. Not only have we been saying way too many horror spoofs coming out in the last couple years, but there also aren't any valid excuses in case a spoof is embarrassingly bad. The good news is that "Transylmania" definitely isn't any worse than "Stan Helsing" or "Scary Movie 4". The bad news is that it sucks nevertheless and hardly contains any juvenile and sexist gags you haven't seen approximately three dozen of times before. As part of a student exchange program, a bunch of idiotic college kids travel to Romania for one semester. One of them is anxious to finally meet his sexy Romanian internet girlfriend while the other just intend to party hard and score with the easy local beauties. Rusty's romantic plans backfire as it turns out the lovely Draguta has a hideous hunchback and a psychopathic midget father and the rest of group runs into trouble with ancient vampire curses and bodily possessions. I chuckled perhaps a total of four or five times throughout, but the rest of the film was derivative and infantile. The acting performances are all neutral, with the exception of the late David Steinberg as the crazy dean with a dungeon full of torture devices, and the Hillendbrand clearly know as little about comical horror as they do about cheesy horror.

Transylmania can be considered the third movie in the National Lampoon's Dorm Daze series. Though it's loosely based off of them, it can be pretty much defined as a third sequel, and doesn't need much knowledge of the first two movies for this one to be seen. Seems like no one in this movie has any knowledge at all. I was lucky enough to speak to directors David and Scott Hillenbrand via the Transylmania fan-page on Facebook. As well as seeing exclusive interviews from the cast.The movie seems like another goofy spin off of the neverending American Pie Presents franchise. Though this accomplishes more than any of those movies have. But when compared to the original three American Pies, it doesn't stand much of a chance. It attempts to be an 80s throwback, which it does feel like a little bit, but not a perfect one.Rusty (Oren Skoog) has been dating an online overseas girl for a while and feels he needs to see her in person. When asked to fly over to Romania to get in touch. He feels that maybe he could get accepted to The Razvan University where she goes to school. They embark on a cross country journey to see her. The Razvan University has a bad history to it. A music box, when opened, posses your soul into a demon vampire. When open, the demon takes over your body. When ceased, or closed, your normal.Little does the gang know, duplicates of themselves, usually with deeper voices, are being produced as well. So the gang must find the fake impersonators, and banish them. Sounds like an uncut episode of Scooby Doo.Though the thing that caught me surprised me was that this is intended to be a spoof movie. And it's actually decent. This one doesn't have random pop culture references popping here and there and at random times. It doesn't have convoluted performances and bad acting. This didn't try to fit every God-forsaking blockbuster into their movie. I thought this might be the "new age" parody film that would start a revolution of the same kind of parody flicks in the style of The Naked Gun, and Airplane, or the absolute classic 70s and 80s style parodies we were waiting for for years.We would finally cease from all the mindless crap Hollywood puts out. No more Jason Friedberg or Aaron Seltzer. No more brain dead first timers forcing us to laugh at corny one liners. The world will finally be at rest from the likes of pointless parodies. That is...until I saw the trailer for The 41-Year-Old Virgin who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It.

Funny, but something was missing in the movie. Sure, "Transylmania" was a funny movie, but there was just something missing from the movie, something that would have made it excellent. It is a good runner-up to the movie "Lesbian Vampire Killers", though not nearly as cool.The story of "Transylmania" is alright and have moments that will have you laughing or smiling at least. What works best for the movie is the mistaken identity thing going on throughout the movie, that was what kept the movie afloat.The cast was alright, and most did a good job with whatever means they had been given for their characters. The traditional stupid attempts of recreating a Transylvanian accent was in place - you just gotta love it when Hollywood movies do that stuff to try to make some accent.One of the better things about the movie was the scenery and stages, they worked very well and had lots of details to them, which was quite nice.Sure "Transylmania" is a comedy, but there are better and funnier comedies out there. But if you like spoof movies, you should check out this movie.

Even though the reviews may have been not so good. I thought this movie was really funny and I enjoyed it. There was actually a plot which a lot of comedy spoof movies don't have. Although you haven't seen the actors in much, i thought they all did a really good job. I think the story was cute and i most surely did laugh!! I recommend it to all. It is a shame to see reviewers writing bad reviews. Who believes them anyway. I know that more then half the time I read what they say I don't agree. Its not fair for them to spoil a movie for others, especially a funny one. I think that if people would just give some things a chance, or an independent production company, they would not be mad they spent their money on the movie. Just because there isn't a huge distributors name attached doesn't mean the movie isn't good for what it is. I heard that it isn't going to be in theaters much after the first week and thats really sad because if people would see it they would really enjoy it I think.