November 21, 2008, 3:26 pm : A straight guys review of “Twilight”

Wow. I’ve been so disappointed in a movie that it’s inspired me to blog for the first time in months. It’s biased and inarticulate but I need to get this out of my system…

I’m sure by now you’ve all been bombarded with enough marking for the movie Twilight that you probably have a vague idea of what it’s about… or at least you’re aware that it exists. The very general, top-level synopsis is that it’s a love story involving a human girl and a vampire. Nothing too original but it had potential. It’s based on the first book in the hugely popular Twilight series. As a fan of vampires and hugely popular book series I really wanted to like this movie but from most everything I was hearing the odds seemed stacked against me. But honestly, I wanted to like it. I wanted to blog in defence of the movie.

My first real hint at the enormity of the Twilight phenomenon was at this years Comic-Con, when the Twilight panel was completely swamped by screaming teenage girls. For some reason I thought “if teenage girls like this, maybe I will too”… since I’m not exactly the manliest dude in the world and some of my favorite entertainment properties are big with the teen girl market (Harry Potter, Buffy, Angel…). I did my best to investigate the upcoming film without delving too far into the spoilers so when I eventually had the chance to the see the film I would be prepared but surprised.

It seemed like the fandom of the series was really part of what made Twilight cool. The communities built around these stories were huge (twilightteens.com, twilight20somethings.com, twilightmoms.com… seriously) and I felt that to get the full effect I needed to see the movie with these people rather than the average theater-goer so I bought tickets to the opening day midnight showing at the Metreon in downtown San Francisco. I figured of all the midnight showings around the US this one should be one of the craziest, it’s San Francisco, everything is crazy here. I was sadly mistaken.

I arrived at the theater around 9 thinking that would probably be early enough to get a seat that isn’t complete garbage and arrive at a time when the fans (read: tweeny girls) would be getting ramped up and crazy. My only basis for comparison for midnight showings of this magnitude are Star Wars and Harry Potter so my hopes were set high. I was expecting to see costumes, tents, lawn chairs… maybe even a parking lot BBQ like we had in Ventura (represent!) for Episode I. What did I see when I approached the line? Fifty or so girls sitting around talking quietly or reading. Occasionally I’d see the standard-issue Hot Topic Twilight t-shirt but nothing costume related (I know it’s not really a costume-type story but I thought maybe some girls would be wearing prom dresses or something like at other Twilight events that I read about). These people weren’t trying to make the most out of the absurdity of waiting hours for a movie, they weren’t trying to have fun… they were just sitting around waiting quietly and patiently. How boring!

They let us into the theater about an hour and fifteen minutes before the film started, I was hoping for a screaming girl stamped but all I got was an orderly single file line straight to my seat. As I waited around somewhat awkwardly watching teenage girls take boring MySpace pictures on their cell phones the theater gradually filled and by the time the movie was ready to start the theater was only about two thirds full. Yup, good thing I showed up early.

Then the moment came, the lights were dimmed and I sat on the edge of my seat waiting to see… the trailer for the next instalment of the Harry Potter series! I’ll admit it, I was more excited to see the trailer on the big screen than I was for Twilight and they didn’t even show it! I read it was supposed to be attached to Twilight but I guess not. My disappointment only continued as the movie began.

This is where my review of the film itself starts but not without a few disclaimers. First off, this review will be sparkling (unfortunately this will not be the only use of that word in this review) with spoilers. If you don’t want to hear the occasional plot point you probably shouldn’t continue. Next, I’m not by any means a professional reviewer and can only give you my personal and unsophisticated opinion. Some slight vulgarities may be used (such as “this movie sucks balls”) so if you’re easily offended turn back now. And finally, I have NOT read the books and have no real knowledge of the plot and characters aside from what’s given in the film and as such I may have taken things in the wrong context or missed something important in the plot because I lack any prior knowledge. I’m going into this with the assumption that the book is far better than the movie and I hope that’s the case or the legions of Twilight fans are just retarded.

The film begins, as so many films do, with a young girl, Bella, moving to a new city. In this case from Phoenix, Arizona to the rural and perpetually foggy town of Forks, Washington to live with her dad while her mom goes traveling with her new husband. It has a bland voiceover where Bella explains all of this. The whole time I couldn’t help but think “who’s she talking to?”. I guess I don’t like voiceovers without some sort of plot devise to make them work (something like writing in a journal or talking to another character or whatever). I don’t like being personally addressed by a character, as if she knows she’s in a movie. But anyway, that’s the least of this movies problems.

On Bella’s first day in school she is remarkably well adjusted and content for a teenaged girl. There’s no angst at all, no real social awkwardness or anything that you would expect for the first day in a new school, especially considering that she’s starting halfway through the second semester of her junior year. By the end of the day she has a completely new group of friends, complete with high school stereotypes such as the jock, the editor of the school paper, the artsy photographer girl, the wallflower girl and… the black kid! All of these characters are likeable enough, I suppose, but then in walks the Cullen family and the focus turns to sexy vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson and from here on forth referred to as Cedric Diggory). There’s an instant attraction between Bella and Cedric which is signified by creepy staring and bad music. Over the course of… I don’t know, a week? These two characters are suddenly in love. And not in a realistic high school way, or in an elegant painful Notebook kind of way or even a slightly cheesy Sleepless in Seatle way but more like the kind of “love” you would see on a show like The OC, Dawsons Creek or, heaven forbid, The Hills. I didn’t understand what exactly was going on between these characters aside from a deep down animalistic attraction. This is made all the more annoying by the fact that dear Bella all but ignores Jacob, a guy who clearly has a thing for her and who also happens to be one of the few likeable characters in the whole film. But enough about that, I’m just trying to say the plot is a two hour love story between two people who don’t understand what love is and the movie is clearly geared at girls who also have no clue how real love works so they’re happy with this substance-free version. Just to be clear, I knew this was a love story going into it, I’m not saying it sucks because of its lack of action or the fact that it’s a bit of a “chick flick”. It sucks because it’s an unexplainable romance between two characters that are hard to care about at all. Oh, and one final note on the “love” between these two. Before their first (and only) kiss, Cedric says something to the effect of “I’ve always wanted to try this”… am I to believe this guy has lived for over 100 years has never kissed a girl? Come on! What has he been doing this whole time to have never met a girl he liked within 100 years. Especially considering the fact that he’s been repeating high school in different cities for most of his life.

Moving on to the “vampires”. I know vampires are not the point of this film but if you’re going to do a genre movie do it right. In this movie they seem to keep the more positive parts of vampire lore such as their strength and speed while doing away with the more inconvenient things like the fact that they can’t go out in the sun. These vampires are more like bloodsucking X-Men than bella Lugosi-esque creatures of the night. I was willing to accept the fact that it’s really super foggy all the time in Forks and that’s why these vampires can wonder around during the day. It’s a cop-out, sure, but I’ll let it go. And then one of the defining scenes in the movie happened. A scene I will remember vividly for the rest of my life due to its complete and utter absurdity. Cedrid decides that his new love needs to see him how he really is, in the monstrous form that all vampires take in the sun. In the forest as he walks slowly into a beam of sunlight that’s shining through the trees I’m expecting to see something hideous. I assume that since the sun doesn’t kill these vampires it must at least make them appear deformed in some way. Cedric starts to unbutton his shirt with his back toward the camera and slowly turns around to reveal that in the sun his skin… SPARKLES!!!! It sparkles!!! That’s the big hideous disfigurement that all vampires are forced to live with if they go out into the sun! They have glittery skin! No joke, it looks like they just sprayed him with silver glitter paint. And he stands there, perfectly serious and calls himself a monster. This might be one of the most idiotic moments in the history of cinema. Sparkle? Gah. Needless to say, at this point I had pretty much lost all faith that this movie would turn around and redeem itself.

Dude. Seriously. He sparkles.

Just when I thought we’d hit an all time low Cedric invites Bella to umpire a friendly game of baseball between his vampire family. Yup, that’s right, a superpower sports scene. It’s exactly what you’d expect so I’m not going to go into it… but really? Fortunately though, at the tail end of these scene the “bad guys” show up to spoil the family’s game and the movie gets… I don’t want to say “good” but it gets tolerable for about 10 minutes as the family is working together trying to help Cedric save Bella from the vampire tracker guy (who, by the way, looks like Axl Rose on the current GnR tour). This ten minutes of tolerance isn’t brought on by the fact that it’s the most action packed part of the movie, although that helped. It’s more because it takes the focus away from the boring lust between two flat, boring characters and puts the spotlight on the entirety of the Cullen family, who are all slightly more likeable that Cedric. This ends in a slightly predicable superpower fight sequence between Cedric and Axl Rose.

And, like so many other high school movies (including the vampire themed Buffy) this movie ends at prom. Where, of course, Cedric and Bella attend together, slow dance and… that’s it. She spends some time trying to convince him to turn her into a vampire, which sounds like a solid life decision based on a love that built over the span of four months at the most.

My apologies to teen girls everywhere but… this movie sucks balls.

Vampires do not sparkle.

P.S. PLEASE feel free to disagree with me and point out the errors of my ways in the comments section. Maybe I really am just missing something. If someone (or several someones) can give me some good reasons I’ll give this movie another chance. With all the hype around this movie I have to feel that maybe I really am missing something.