Vampire Girls Just Want to Have Dates (Published 2012)

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Amy Heckerling

1 hour 33 minutes

Nice girls don’t drink human blood. But they can still be vampires. Just give them a rat and a straw, and they’re good to go. The image of Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter slurping away at furry beverages is probably the grossest thing in “Vamps,” written and directed by Amy Heckerling. It’s also probably the funniest.

Ms. Heckerling, the proud possessor of two modern classics on her résumé — “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Clueless” — never decided what “Vamps” should be. Mostly it plays like a teen comedy without teens. After all, our vampire heroines, Goody (Ms. Silverstone) and Stacy (Ms. Ritter), are really, really old (about 190 or so) and pretty old (about 40). Yet they’re sweetie pies who just want to have fun, meet someone special and not hurt people or domestic animals (hence the rat drinks).

Goody, a veritable repository of history, has nostalgic leanings. Stacy likes to text. And that’s about it for character. As for the vampire genre, though it seems ripe for satire, all we get here is warmed-over hokum. Goody and Stacy have a mean overseer (Sigourney Weaver, one of many wasted big-name actors), a few rules to follow (sleeping in coffins, avoiding daylight) and problems going out with human men.

Aging is probably the real theme here, but it’s approached sidelong and has no punch. Still, only the nostalgia has any real conviction. “Nosferatu” (not “Twilight”), Jimmy Cagney, silent movies, 1960s radicals: Ms. Heckerling’s fondness for these things seems more real than her interest in silly vamp stories.

“Vamps” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Parents have nothing to fear from these sweetie-pie vampires, except a few bad words.