Lipnicki Mostly Mugs in ‘Little Vampire’

Poor child actors. They aren’t allowed the same latitude for growth as regular kids. Where we find wonder in each developmental change in our own kids, we tend to be dismayed when we see a once-adorable child star advance in years and lose that natural kid energy that made them so appealing from the start.

Such is the case with Jonathan Lipnicki, that bespectacled 5-year-old boy who softened granite hearts as Renee Zellweger’s son in “Jerry Maguire.” His cuddly quotient began to melt in “Stuart Little,” and he’s skating on very thin ice in “The Little Vampire,” in which he is called upon to carry a pleasant but unremarkable bedtime story on his shoulders.

Based on characters from Angela Sommer-Bodenburg’s novels and boasting a pedigree that includes screenwriters of “Chicken Run” (Karey Kirkpatrick) and “Beetlejuice” (Larry Wilson), “The Little Vampire” gives us Tony Thompson (Lipnicki), a 9-year-old San Diego boy who is transplanted to Scotland where his dad has taken a job designing a golf course. Tony is bullied and ostracized by the local kids, but wins the favor of a kid vampire named Rudolph (Rollo Weeks), who accidentally flies into his bedroom one evening.

Rudolph takes an ecstatic Tony on bat-flying adventures and Tony reciprocates by helping Rudolph and his family (Richard E. Grant, Alice Krige and Anna Popplewell) locate a missing amulet that would rescue them from the world of the undead. There are sundry complications courtesy of an inept vampire hunter named Rookery (Jim Carter) and the stuffy Lord McAshton who employs Tony’s dad.

One would love to know what sparked the decision to bring in “Last Exit to Brooklyn” director Uli Edel to film such a confection, but he approaches the material with a straightforward hand that is refreshingly free of hipness or camp. The movie’s assertive naivete plays to kids Tony’s age or younger, who will take comfort in the benign portrayal of vampires. Older kids and grown-ups looking for more sophisticated humor will have to content themselves with a running gag about vampire cows, which could have been funnier than Edel makes it here.

As for the once-adorable Lipnicki, he is pressed into the service of mugging and shtick that would test the mettle of Roberto Benigni. As you bear witness to the disintegration of one child actor’s charms, it may leave you in the sort of funk you haven’t felt since Hayley Mills found herself in the family way.

* MPAA rating: PG, for some mild peril. Times guidelines: Fright scenes might scare the youngest viewers.

‘The Little Vampire’

Jonathan Lipnicki: Tony Thompson

Richard E. Grant: Frederick

Jim Carter: Rookery

Alice Krige: Freda

A New Line Cinema and Cometstone Pictures presentation, released by New Line. Director Uli Edel. Producer Richard Claus. Executive producers Alexander Buchman, Anthony Waller, Larry Wilson. Screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and Larry Wilson based on “The Little Vampire” novels by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg. Cinematographer Bernd Heinl. Editor Peter R. Adam. Costume designer James Acheson. Music Nigel Clarke & Michael Csanyi-Wills. Production designer Joseph Nemec III. Art director Nick Palmer. Set decorator Jille Azis. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

In general release.