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For all its freaks, The Vampire’s Assistant is in fact quite mundane. The cumbersome weight of setting up a franchise kills any potential this one has to be a good movie.

John C. Reilly is just about the last guy you’d think to cast as a vampire. He’s older, pockmarked, plays mostly goofy roles and is blessed with a mop of loose, curly hair. (And then there’s that slightly muppet-like voice.) It’s a pleasant surprise, then, to see him own the role of Crepsley the vampire, a tired and cynical old soul who puts on a kind of magic show with the traveling Cirque du Freak. Reilly is a talented performer, which aids him well: he’s good enough to be great without really trying, a fitting style for such a downbeat and aged character.

How, then, did he get surrounded by such a predictable and uninspired movie? Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is an adaptation of the first in a series of young adult novels, and in every way it feels like it.

There’s the fateful introduction of the young protagonist Darren Shan (named after the series’ author and played by Chris Massoglia) to the Cirque, a lot of talk about destiny and redemption, even the “final battle” that we can sense is a penny-ante affair meant to set up the real conflict down the line. It’s a bit of a cheat, in other words, because you can damn near feel the weight of all the stuff that’s being held back for later work.

In that way I was reminded of The Golden Compass, another film that felt like a rush job to set up a lucrative franchise that you weren’t yet allowed to enjoy. (Not so lucky, that one.) Another shared characteristic is how rushed the proceedings feel toward the end; one gets the sense that there’s great whole hunks of this thing sitting on a cutting room floor somewhere. Such is the curse of a movie that must do all of that franchise setup work without dragging on far longer than is tolerable.

Briefly: Darren is a goody-two-shoes kid in Anytown, USA, with a bright future and a best friend (Josh Hutcherson, playing Steve) from the wrong side of the tracks. Rather unwisely, Darren steals Crepsley’s pet spider after a performance of the Cirque.

Darren is caught, deals are made, and before too long Darren is Crepsley’s half-vampire assistant and he and Steve are the objects of undue attention from a certain Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris), a charming villain with vague plans to start up a war between vampires. There’s also a love interest and a prophecy, because hey, fantasy epic.

Comparisons will be made to Twilight (a comparison the poster begs, to its detriment), that other YA series with vampires as their centerpiece. But The Vampire’s Assistant is a more traditional tale: more interested in sights and wonders and less in making sure everyone gets hitched up with their soul mates. Assistant’s frequent vampire fights, too, are distinctly masculine in flavor.

I wanted to like the movie, I really did. The premise was oddball enough and the cameo cast enticing enough (Salma Hayek, Willem Defoe, Jane Krakowski) to raise the probability of a surprise hit. Alas, no. Not even a wonderful opening title sequence or John C. Reilly could drag The Vampire’s Assistant out of prologue malaise.

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