Twilight

Before I begin let me say a few things. First off, I am not against romantic dramas. The time I sat through The Notebook I was affected by the love story. Also, ask Erik and he will confirm my Moulin Rouge obsession. Secondly, I love vampire stories and I love vampire stories involving falling in love with human beings, (Hello, Buffy!). Lastly, no matter what I think about the movie, I am glad it is successful. Independent film companies are suffering and Twilight is from such a company. Plus it has a woman director and women directors never get a shot at big money pictures.

Bella(Kristen Stewart), the only pale person to ever come out of Arizona has just moved to the Pacific Northwest to live her with dad because her mom and her mom's boyfriend are going to Jacksonville for Spring Training for Baseball. (On a side note, it makes no sense for a minor league baseball player to live in Arizona if he is not playing for an Arizona Spring Training baseball team.) Bella and her dad have an odd relationship and in her new hometown, of only 3,000 people, Bella is big news for the school. She adjusts well and makes friends very quickly, even if she doesn't seem to enjoy their company much, which is a nice change for these types of movies. Her first day she is paired with Edward Cullen(Robert Pattinson) and Cullen is apparently repulsed by her scent and goes missing. He comes back, eventually and they engage in perfectly awkward conversation. Bella is then almost hit by a car and Edward comes from nowhere and stops the car and saves her life. Now Bella needs to know who Edward is. Well, Edward is supposedly a vampire. I say supposedly because he is missing vampire qualities. He does not seem to grow fangs, he has a reflection and the biggest vampire departure, the sun does not burn him alive. No, the sun makes him glisten like a diamond. Edward comes from a family of Vampires who are "vegetarians" meaning the don't drink human blood, only animal blood. Bella is so taken by Edward his confessions of murder, animal murder and his constant desire to drink her does not scare her. She trusts him, when he does not trust himself. Bad vampires come into town and they want Bella. Bella has a special scent. I like to call it "Le vampire." Vampires all want to drink her more than anyone else. Bella is like chocolate for vampires. Bad vampires and good vampires fight and through it all Bella and Edward fall more and more in love or eternal lust.

When a movie is super entertaining small bad details can be overlooked, when a movie sucks those minor details enhance the suck. Twilight is not at all nearly entertaining enough to take my mind off of the minor things that were so bad. First off, the idea of vampires able to live in sunlight is a hard one for me to swallow. I understand that vampire legends have all kinds of different myths, but vampires cannot go into the sun. Also, in a town of 3,000 people, some of which live on an Indian reservation and do not go to the actual high school, how did the town get such a huge high school and why? Are class sizes like 15 people? Are there just a bunch of empty classrooms? Where are all the adults, if everyone of the 3000 people are high school students to warrant such a large school? Is it love when you feel that strongly because your ultimate desire is to murder that person? Do I love T-Pain secretly because I want to kill him and maybe even taste his blood? The Cullens are full of teenagers, so in theory they have to move often. And I know there was a one-off joke put in about high schools, but if the Cullen teens are not meant to socialize with humans, which it seems they are not, then at some point don't the "parents" just tell people they are home schooling the teens? High schools can only teach so much, and it would make sense to let the kids learn on their own.

The effects are very Smallville like, meaning Twilightplays more like the two hour premiere of a new show than a movie. I get the small budget and the small studio, but the trailing effect of the vampires to show speed, is a television thing, not a movie thing. With the exception of two or three scenes the dialog is clunky and way too heavy on exposition considering the story is such a classic Romeo and Juliet affair. Robert Pattinson oozes a smarmy charm and a danger that I like, but Edward is only interesting in scenes where he is having fun and smiling. Edward as a tortured monster would only work, if we had some flashbacks to see the monster inside of him. Without a point of reference for the monster, Edward just seems like a guy who is tortured because girls like tortured guys. He certainly looks the part, although his eye brows were just too perfect for me. I think he has a bright future, but I also thought that of Hayden Christianson at one point. Kristen Stewart does a good job with Bella. There is never a moment when you don't believe she believes she is in love. The two are gorgeous together and the heat in the one moment of passion burned brightly enough. However, with a name like Bella Swan, it is kind of hard to like her. That name is just too on the nose for this kind of story. It makes me think the author spent months writing variations of names and crossing them off until she found the "right" one.

There were some things I did like though. I like the crossing of genres found in the scene where Bella meets the Cullen family. Being a teenager meeting the family of your boyfriend is awkward enough as it is, but then throw in the fact that they are all vampires and it makes for a great moment. That scene is played perfectly in its awkwardness and comedy. However, why doesn't Bella fall in love with the entire family, since they are all suppressing their overwhelming urges to drink her like Gatorade? Also, the baseball scene, while a clear rip-off of Harry Potter's Quidich obsession, has a nice charm to it. It is played for laughs and thrills and the effects actually almost work in that moment.

On HBO there is a show called True Blood, which is based on a series of novels dealing with vampires. It is in to be a vampire these days. I bring this up because of one similarity between the two. In True blood, the main character, Sookie, can read the minds of everyone, until she meets a vampire named Bill. She falls in love with him. In Twilight, Edward can read everyone's mind except Bella's and he falls in love with her. The reasoning for it is not explained in Twilight, so it just comes off as very easy and unconvincing plot device. It seems in Twilight, neither of the young lovers falls in love because they have come to know and love the other. They are in love because the writer has decided they are going to be in love and the readers accept it because they think that is how love is supposed to be. Love is supposed to be all consuming and the ultimate act of love is staying with someone even though every thought in your head wants to devour that person whole and drain her like bath water from the tub. I cannot accept that.

I have heard many people coming out of the movie with a world full of complaints but saying they loved it. I wish that would stop. They did not love the movie if they have complaints about just about every aspect. What they loved was seeing the characters from the books on the screen. What they loved was experiencing the event that was Twilight. They loved the theater full of like minded people. Loving a movie and loving the experience of a movie are two different things. I first experienced that with X-Men 3. I came out thinking I loved it after the midnight show, but I did not love the movie, I loved the experience of watching it at midnight with people who were cheering and loving the experience as well.

Final Grade: D