OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: Flaps around pretty well but never really takes off.

Details: Starring Jonathan Lipnicki and Richard E. Grant. Directed by Udi Edel. Rated PG for mildly scary situations. One hour, 35 minutes.

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Review: First Buffy kicks his next of kin's butt weekly on television. Now little Jonathan Lipnicki, the bespectacled scene stealer from "Jerry Maguire," is helping a vampire family realize its centuries-old dream of becoming human. What's next? Take a Vampire to Work Day?

In "The Little Vampire," Lipnicki plays Tony, a California kid unhappily transplanted to Scotland, where his dad is building a golf course for eccentric Lord McAshton (John Woods). Not only is Tony beaten up every day at school but he's plagued by vampire dreams. Then one night his dreams become reality when a real live (or would that be undead?) flesh-and-blood-sucking vampire boy flies into Tony's bedroom. He's Rudolph (Rollo Weeks) and, like the rest of his brood, he'd rather be human than eat one. That means obtaining a long-lost magic amulet before the family is stalked down and staked out by an obsessed vampire hunter (Jim Carter decked out like the rough trade in certain parts of the West Village).

At its best, "The Little Vampire" plays like an Anne Rice tale for the Nintendo set (which, by the way, Tony teaches Rudolph in exchange for some rather lovely night flights over the Scottish moors). There's some scary stuff, including Rudolph's parents (Richard E. Grant and Alice Krige) in full Goth get-up. And some funny stuff - some of it broad (vampire-sucked cows hanging from their barn rafters) and some of it more subtle. Mistakenly believing that Tony has been turned into a vampire, Lord McAshton tries to comfort the kid's dad. "It's not easy for a father to hear that his son is a blood-zucking fiend," he commiserates.

But much of the script, by Larry Wilson ("Beetlejuice") and Karey Kirkpatrick ("Chicken Run"), works at cross purposes. It's as if the writers couldn't make up their minds whether to deliver a kids' fantasy that adults might like or a slightly more adult film that was still kid-friendly. Director Udi Edel doesn't seem to know either. But then, he's best known for the decidedly un-kid-friendly "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Body of Evidence," starring Madonna.

"The Little Vampire" isn't a bad picture. It offers imagination and humor and a touch of goose bumps. But it's the sort of film that remains a time passer rather than a classic, one that never quite makes the transition from enjoyable to enthralling.

One final caveat: Could we please put a moratorium on the Macaulay Culkin scream take from "Home Alone"? They try it about four times here, which is at least three times too many.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service