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Interview with the Vampire - DTS Customer Reviews (76 - 78 of 79 Reviews)

A Guilty Pleasure
I am a huge fan of Anne Rice's work. So, naturally, I was enthused to see this movie, but there are pros and cons. The biggest con I find in this film is the horrible casting job of Antonio Banderas as Armand. Not that Antonio didn't do a great job, but he did not look the part. Anyone who read the book knows of Armand's beautiful youth. Anne's passionate writing style is magnafied when describing the soft, innocent look held in Armand's face. He is the ultimate child vampire, rivaled only by Claudia, who no longer exists. To see Antonio in this role confuses me. How could Anne consent to this? Or did she have a choice?
As far as the pros go, I would have to agree with the fact that Tom Cruise does a fantastic job recreating the lustful, tormenting character of Lestat. The master De Lioncourt springs from the pages and onto the screen when Tom sinks his fangs into an unsuspecting neck.
I also praise Kirsten Dunst for her portrayal of Claudia. Though Claudia was much younger in the book, I do not believe an actress that age would have been able to understand the part. Kirsten was only 11 when she took on the part, but she made Claudia the tormented doll child she was meant to be.
This movie trys to capture the esscence of the book, and does a commendable job, but doesn't match it's literary couterpart. I reccomend to anyone who's seen this movie to read the book, and then read the rest of the series. You'll find that there is much more to Louis, Lestat, Armand, and even Claudia. (Here's a tip, after Queen of the Damned, it falls)

overrated
The Amazon.com review raves about Cruise's part but I did not enjoy it, he has played in a lot more better roles than this. It's mostly his speech (and Brad Pitts as well) that might me laugh when it was not supposed to.

The only actors that get a B or higher are the Interviewer and Antonio Banderas who's already Spanish accent is fitting.

It does look real and it that case I never got the feeling of watching a horrible slasher movie, the story is the highlight of the movie and therefore still worth watching. Somehow I still feel it could have been done better than this.

Could be better, but passable
This movie was initially a disappointment as it deviated quite a bit from the book by Rice. It totally skipped Lestat's tortured, painful childhood, and missed out on much of the other subtleties that Rice created in the character, turning a three-dimensional, very realistic (given that it's a fantasy creature) character into a stereotype vampire. Frankly, Tom Cruise was totally uninspiring in his role as Lestat such that until the closing scene of the movie I didn't even realise that the part had such 'stellar' casting.

Given the nature of the book and plot, with its chronological timeframe spanning hundreds of years, it's impossible for the movie to be fast-paced as an action flick, as criticized by some reviewers, but I think that in its slower pace it has remained true to the book's Gothic, brooding atmosphere.

Although Brad Pitt does /not/ look the part of Louis (at all!), he has managed to do a wonderful job portraying the adolescent, conflicted vampire and Kirsten Dunst shows her talent in her portrayal of a woman trapped in a child's body, two major redeeming points for the movie.

But perhaps the best touch to the movie, IMO, is the last scene where Lestat regains life. It was this scene which totally revised my opinion of the movie, though it was not in the book. Perhaps because it was so symbolic of the undead's clasping greed for life that is the core of Anne Rice's vampire, the vitality, exuberance and speed as evinced by Lestat and showed such promise for a movie of the next book.

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