Jenn Proske and Matt Lanter

Bloody heck! Talk about a couple of jokers setting themselves up to be the butt of their own punchline.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, co-writers-directors of the toothless spoof “Vampires Suck,” walk right into a sucker punch with their latest sophomoric parody of movie genres, this one taking on all things “Twilight.” With the level of humor here running to flatulence jokes, groin kicks and high-school smart-aleck cracks, their movie does, indeed, (surely no other critic in the world will be this clever) SUCK!

No surprise, actually, since these two schlockmeisters have built an unlikely career on obvious, low-brow, aggressively mirthless film parodies such as “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Meet the Spartans” and “Disaster Movie.”  They also pasted together the wildly scattershot scripts for “Spy Hard” and “Scary Movie.”

“Vampires Suck” takes the most obvious path to cheap laughs by riffing, sometimes line-for-line, on the storylines of the obsessively popular “Twilight” and “New Moon” films.

The plot goes like this: After her randy mother abandons her to become a Tiger Woods groupie on the pro golf tour, chaste heroine Becca Crane (newcomer Jenn Proske in a thankless role) shows up in rainy, gloomy Sporks, Washington, to live with her overly protective sheriff father Frank (Diedrich Bader). At her new school, Becca finds herself torn between two hunks – the brooding, pasty-faced Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter), who might be a vampire, and the shaggy Jacob White (Chris Riggi), whose raunchy canine tendencies lead us to suspect that he might be a werewolf.

We’re expected to follow this listless, twisted love triangle as Friedberg-Seltzer clumsily scatter in random pop-culture gags touching on everything from Lady Gaga to the Kardashians and from the Black Eyed Peas to “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” Along the way there are “jokes” about Becca’s dad sleeping with an inflatable doll and battling a wheelchair-bound American Indian, Jacob chasing cats and urinating on a fire hydrant, Edward juggling a baby and a bowling ball, and so on.

The scattershot formula – mile-a-minute gags, some hitting, many missing – goes all the way back to the “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun” days, except that those movies’ creators, Jim Abrahams and brothers Jerry and David Zucker, knew the difference between parody and pandering. And they usually stayed on the right side of the divide between wit and witlessness.

Friedberg-Selzer gleefully embrace the latter on both those fronts. Lowbrow is too lofty a level for them. For example: In one scene, the moody Edward stands over innocent Becca as she sleeps and wistfully sighs, “Just you breathing is the greatest gift in the world to me.” Cue flatulence. See? Friedberg-Selzer’s writing definitely does suck wind.

- Dennis King

“Vampires Suck”

PG-13
1:20
1/2 star
Starring: Chris Riggi, Matt Lanter, Jenn Proske, Diedrich Bader, Parker Dash
(Crude sexual content, comic violence, language, teen partying)

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