Lost Boys (5 Stars)

This is a film that critics can tear apart. There's so much about it that's bad, from the script to the exaggerated non-acting, and yet the end result is so good. It's a film that has rightly become a cult classic. Please don't use cliches like "it's so bad that it's good", an expression that I don't like anyway. It doesn't apply to "Lost Boys". The film is brilliant throughout.

The film has probably become better with time, ageing like a fine wine. It's an ode to the 1980's, and anyone who feels nostalgic about the 1980's will like it more today than the cinema audiences did in 1987, when it was made. The hairstyles and the attitudes are exaggerated 1980's.

The vampires in the film are cool, even though they're still the bad guys. Other critics have said that "Lost Boys" paved the way for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the TV series, not the film), but I'm not convinced that that's the case. In the TV series the vampires aren't cool, it's the vampire slayers who are cool. In "Lost Boys" the vampire slayers are dorky and awkward. They act like they're bold and know anything, but as soon as they're in danger they scream like little boys.

What Edgar Frog really means is "We kill vampires". Although he and his brother panic so much when they're in danger that I can't help feeling this is their first attempt at vampire slaying.

And what sort of a family name is Frog anyway?

Almost all of the non-vampire characters are caricatures. The single mother, the eccentric grandfather, the horny older teenager, the comic nerd younger teenager. This is what makes them so appealing. They're ridiculously simplistic, which means that the film doesn't even need character development because we already know who they are.

Whatever points people can name as faults can be turned around to look like strengths. Try me. If you're a serious film critic write a list of the film's weaknesses in the comments box.

I was surprised to realise that I haven't watched the film since I started my blog in September 2010. More than nine years. I know that I watched it several times before then, ever since I discovered it in the late 1990's. Sometimes I think I should stop watching new films, always a risk, and just rewatch the old films that I know are good. So many films, so little time.

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