Surprisingly well cast until the end.

Rating: 9/10 (20 May 2005)

A movie that held with fair faithfulness to the book and the style of the author...and with the quality of the book, what more could one ask?
Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt and Brad Pitt as Louis de Point du Lac were as unlikely a pair of choices as I could imagine on first hearing of the movie, yet both carried off the roles with flair and with a level of faithfulness to the characters as written by Rice that was intensely surprising...especially, I understand, to Anne Rice, herself. (Christian Slater as Daniel...no surprise, and no reason for surprise: the role was not that demanding.) Kirsten Dunst as the child vampire Claudia was wonderful, and her portrayal of the growing anger of an immortal permanently trapped in a child's body was possibly the best performance in the movie, and heralded a career to come that has met that promise.
Given all the above, one can only wonder at what point the casting agency stopped reading the book. Antonio Banderas was utterly miscast as the Vampire Armand, who was (in Rice's books) a perpetual teenager with fair complexion, blue eyes and golden hair. The obvious choice was Leonardo diCaprio, and if he was unavailable or uninterested, there were twenty better choices than Banderas waiting in the wings...second choice would have been to cast Daniel differently and give the role to Christian Slater, but Ricky Schroeder, Mark-Paul Gosselaar...the list is too long to bother, and second-guessing the casting director is futile, but it did render the end a great disappointment to Anne Rice fans.