Movie Review

Twilight

How “Twilight” came to have its own weekend is an interesting story riddled with conflict and disappointment. This was the weekend “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” was removed from, sending many angry readers to write letters expressing their discontent to the Warner Bros. heads. Then the focus shifted to “The Soloist," Robert Downey Jr.'s best shot at a possible Oscar nod this year, but because of Paramount’s falling out with DreamWorks and new plan to release only 20 films a year, that was also removed ruining what could have been the cherry on top to a fantastic come back year. So now “Twilight” is under the microscope all by itself, bringing with it a huge amount of fanfare and unwavering devotion by teenage girls to the Stephanie Meyer romance novel. The result is like watching Anne Rice combined with Dawson’s Creek, just so much more bland and uninspired than you would even expect. Vampires are reduced to sissies. The romance between the two lead characters and the war between vampires and werewolves is laughably cheesy. And basically I kept wondering through this entire movie whether or not this was some type of joke.

What Meyer has done here is put her female heroine in such an enviable position that what teenage girl wouldn't want to spend time in this world? Just the thing is I'm not sure finding a perfect guy even qualifies in the fantasy genre. The girl I'm assuming every fan wants to be is Bella (Kristen Stewart), who has just moved to a small Washington State town called Forks so that she can be closer with her dad (Billy Burke). She starts at a new school with all the usual cliques and even a few unusual ones. Bella meets Edward (Robert Pattinson), a handsome young man who seems to be part of a group of beautiful, yet pale-looking people. At first Edward is stand-offish with Bella but soon the two are bonding and becoming best of friends. Then Bella finds out his secret. He's actually a vampire, but a vegetarian. His whole family is against eating people, but that's not to say it isn't a struggle for him to curb his appetite, especially around Bella who he hungers for in more ways than one. The problem is there are werewolves and other vampires who do eat people, one named James (Cam Gigandet) comes into the picture with a particular sweet tooth for Bella.

Catherine Hardwicke is no stranger to stories about teenagers, having done the much better “Thirteen” and “Lords of Dogtown.” Here all of her scenes feature a chilling blue hue that almost seems to bounce off the deathly pale faces of the characters. This is pretty much all she can do to keep this thing from falling into ridiculousness. Vampires have jumped the shark here. They’re Calvin Klein models, all bent on being gentle, caring boyfriend types who swoon over their girls. They don’t eat people. Instead of burning away in the sun, their skin glistens like diamonds in it. They don’t live in a castle but a nice loft. They shop at the Gap. They play baseball in one scene that suffers mightily from going overboard with effects. They’re the all-American family. They’re also duller than shit. Meyers story strips away all the edge about vampires but who cares when they look this hot right? The special effects are bad. A vampire running looks like a road-runner cartoon and jumping from tree to tree doesn’t get much better. It seems to take forever for Bella to finally figure out what we already know. Secondary characters I’m assuming are going to fill bigger roles in sequels are introduced and then dropped and the whole war between werewolves and vampires is set up but then never really utilized. All we see is a lot of cheesy menacing glances and theatric posing. A villain is brought in later but is so one-dimensional that it really doesn’t even matter.

The romance is nearly dead on arrival, or so I think. I realize that I’m not going to change many minds in the teenage girl set but you gotta admit one thing, there isn’t a lot to hold on to here. Other than some pretty faces, half-assed special effects, and castrated vampires with nearly no clever features, what is there to take away from this movie? It’s all so safe and harmless, a marshmallow vampire flick that doesn’t care so much with the emotional pain that comes with being the undead, or with the blood that comes with it (since most of the murders happen off-screen) but rather it’s a glorified way for teenage girls to dream of perfect romance with a perfect guy that is never going to happen in real life. The level of sap this movie reaches is unbelievably ridiculous and at the center of it all are two actors who really don’t seem to know what to do. I didn’t buy their romance for a second, had no idea what it was that held them together, and found it increasingly cheesy and even a little creepy every time they would say lines like “I love to watch you sleep.”

I’m only assuming the book by Meyer is terrible. It seems like it from the movie but I haven’t laid any blame on screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg yet and she deserves almost all of it. If the book does have any meaningful themes, she drowns them out with all the constant swooning and whirlwind romantic crap. Kirsten Stewart really can’t do much except look serious and nearly sedated and Robert Pattinson is really only here for his James Dean-looks. He has a nice smile and he’s very handsome but there is no soul to this movie. It just sits there destroying the good name of vampire with a lot of nonsense. Supposedly sequels to this movie are coming. With any luck, an actual story and some real conflict are coming with them.

Craig's Grade: D+

A	10.9%
B	41.8%
C	31.8%
D	15.3%
F	0.3%