Good characters but needed more of a story

Rating: 6/10 (3 December 2015)

Jemaine Clement has a very unique sense of humour. If you've seen 'Flight of the Conchords' you'll know that his is a brand of comedy that is not for everyone, but if it is for you you'll absolutely love it. It's an incredibly dry type of humour which is why I wasn't surprised to hear he was doing a vampire movie. It sounded right up his alley. And he nailed the humour, he really did. The only problem was he never bothered to accompany it with a story and so the film just feels like 80 minutes of improvised vampire jokes.
I read that he and co-writer/director Taika Waititi wrote a script but never actually showed it to the cast and just let them improvise almost the entire thing and adjusted the script accordingly. For me they needed to take a leaf out of Larry David's comedy series 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' where everything is improvised but still with very strict guidelines of information that needs to be included to further the story. It works for him and I see no reason why it couldn't have worked here. Improvising everything including the story is just madness and it is sadly what holds this film back from being a truly great New Zealand comedy.