Book-to-Movie Review: Vampire Academy

Happy Sunday everyone!! Who went to see Vampire Academy this weekend?

THIS girl did! To be completely and totally honest with you, I expected it to be really, really bad. Have you seen Beautiful Creatures? Remember how god-awful that was? That's basically what I was expecting. Nonsensical, cheesy, alternative endings... etc.

I was so, so wrong. The usual concern for a book-to-movie adaptation are plot changes and things being added in or taken out. I won't lie: things were left out - but it worked for the movie. It moved swiftly and hit all the major plot points including things with Natalie and Victor Dashkov, and I thought it was awesome that they added in some of the tiny little details that are used in later books and could be used in later movies. ***SPOILER*** They did add in this weird little thing about Moroi spraying blood on the walls with their wrists like some strange fad which was awkward and incredibly stupid but, hey - ya win some, ya lose some. ***END SPOILER***

Vampire Academy was hysterically funny. I originally hated the trailers because they seemed cheesy and silly but the movie really played up Rose's sarcasm while still keeping the air of darkness that is part of the books. I was cracking up the whole time and even the "let's make tonight our bitch" line from the trailer seemed less cheesy in context.

Zoey Deutch did an awesome job playing Rose! She was the perfect mix of sarcasm and bad-ass, I just loved her! Lucy Fry who played Lissa made me like her character when I never liked her much in the books. She was brought to life and was a little bit more 3-dimensional in the movies. I wasn't entirely crazy about the casting for Christian but I think Dominic Sherwood did a good job, even if he didn't look exactly how I'd pictured him in my head.

Okay, so maybe I didn't hate the casting of of Dimitri that much..

And I know you're all wondering: Dimitriiiii! I was not happy with the casting for Dimitri. Danila Kozlovsky looked too old (and I think he was actually older in the movie than in the book) and he wasn't.... sexy, for lack of a better term. I think we've all pictured Dimitri as this sexy guy with a hot bod but what we got was a little more mediocre. Attractive but not sexy, stocky but not chiseled. Not to mention the creep factor of him looking like he's 34, not 24. So needless to say, I was not happy with the choice for Dimitri..... until that secretly-hunky man SMILED. I about died when he smiled...those dimples... and when he says "Roza, my Roza"... Sweet Baby Jesus, I was a goner.. He did have a heavier accent than I was expecting though, which sometimes made it hard to understand him, but it was adorable and I loved it. I went in there expecting to hate him but I actually kind of love him, just wish he was hotter (and um.. younger..).

As further evidence of the awesomeness of this movie, I dragged my fiance with me (it was our anniversary and how could he tell me no?) and he said he fully expected to hate every second of it,  but he didn't. He actually gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. Again... an almost-30-year-old man, hates vampire crap, hates YA crap, hates everything I'm into... and he actually kind of liked it. He said he granted the extra .5 because it made him laugh out loud. I'm still amazed.

Rating: ★★★★ 1/2

Overall, I really, really liked Vampire Academy. I was pleasantly surprised and I think it did a great job of bringing the story to life! I actually liked it more than I liked the first book (it feels blasphemous to say this). I hope they make a movie for the next book too (kind of hoping they combine some of them so it's not a 6 movie series, eek). They definitely did everything right and left it open for the movie series to continue (instead of changing the ending, *ahem Beautiful Creatures ahem* to provide "closure"). Great movie and I actually kind of want to see it again.

Did you see Vampire Academy? What did you think? I loved it, I hope you all were as pleasantly surprised by it as I was!

A.