tek's rating: ¾

Liar, Liar, Vampire, on Nickelodeon
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This aired in 2015, but I didn't see it until 2019, on Hulu (but it's not there anymore). It's an obvious spoof of the Twilight franchise, and there are several references (both explicit and implicit) to the franchise in this TV movie. A self-described dork named Davis Pell moves from Australia to a small town in the U.S. called Forksley. He has a vivid imagination, including things like battling ninjas. His new neighbor, Vi (pronounced "vee"), sees him engaging in this odd behavior, and makes fun of him for it (though not really in a mean way). Later, at school, a popular girl named Caitlyn Crisp (who makes vlogs or whatever), notices a number of things about Davis which, out of context, make her believe he's a vampire. She puts this in her vlogs, and soon everyone at school (except Vi) believe he really is a vampire, and that makes him popular. Davis decides to play along with this, in order to get closer to Caitlyn, whom he wants to date. Of course this angers her current boyfriend, Bon, so he and his buddies want to get back at him. One of Bon's friends has a "weird uncle" who calls himself "Baron Von Awesome," who is eager to tackle a vampire-hunting mission. Meanwhile, Davis and Vi become closer as she helps him learn how to better act like a modern, Twilight-style vampire, because she finds it amusing to make Caitlyn and all the other popular kids at school look foolish. Of course, this is also one of those movies where it's obvious the friends would make a better couple than one friend and his/her initial love interest, and the friends will almost certainly realize this by the end of the movie.

Anyway... for the most part, the movie is just redonkulous, and for awhile I thought it was just plain bad. But it sort of grew on me, as it progressed. Not to the point of thinking it's really good, but enough that I was able to appreciate its silliness. Also I really liked Vi, and Davis was decent, too. And there's a plot twist at one point that I actually thought was good. Plus there's a good lesson near the end. And then some more redonkulousness. So I definitely ended up enjoying it more than I expected to, when I first started watching it.


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