"I never gave much thought to how I would die. But dying for someone you love, that's not such a bad way to go."
So begins the cinematic rendition of the modern tale Twilight, which, if sales are to believed, is the 7th best selling book of all time. Let's start with my biases straight off when I started this film. First, I love vampire myths in many forms, particularly Bram Stoker's and Anne Rice's. Dracula and Lestat rank up there as some of the most interesting literary characters ever created. When Interview With The Vampire came out and I heard Tom Cruise would be Lestat, I was aghast and dead set against it. But it surprised me with how good it was, and now I love it. I have been proved wrong before when I hated an idea. Now, I have tried to read this book, that so many starry-eyed young (and not so young) girls have swooned over. I wanted to see what the big deal was about. I tried, valiantly, to finish the book. I never got beyond 100 pages, and even that was torture. The main heroine, Bella, is a whiny, stuck-up little brat who incessantly complains and moans about her situation. She hates the little town she's in. She hates the stupid little people who are around her and acts above them, even though she has crippling self-doubt of her own. This narrative goes on and on for about 70 pages; poor little me, I hate my life. Then she meets Edward Cullen, an impossibly beautiful boy vampire and his impossibly beautiful vampire family with impossibly beautiful vampiric manners and impossibly beautiful vampire features and impossibly beautiful blah blah blah. If you think I am exaggerating, Stephanie Meyers comes up with more ways to describe how beautiful Edward is than the great poets have described their greatest and unrequited loves. That's about as far as I got. I couldn't take it any more. I realize I am not the target audience for this book, but it was just too painful. So before anyone says, and a few have already, that the movie is not a fair representation of the book; well, it is not a good advocate for this picture, either.
Now, that said, how is the movie? It has remarkable faults, but it is not horrible. The worst insult that I can honestly throw at it is that it is not a bomb, it it's pretty dumb. The first half took some slogging through, but it got moderately interesting in the end. Why it took so long to get good, I'll never know, but there it is. So what is wrong with it? Let's start with everything. Ie neuters the vampire myth. It is the feel-good, PETA-approved version of vampires. The good ones don't prey on humans, only animals. Vegetarians, as Edward says in the movie. Vampires after all, are not perfect predators who drink blood from humans, the are misunderstood, brooding poets at heart. After all, don't lions and sharks eat tofu and garden burgers as well? Even Bella is a vegetarian, which we see multiple times with her diet and constant badgering of the other characters in the movie on their eating habits. So why shouldn't the perfect killing machines be vegans, too? This, to me, is an annoying trait behind a lot of these so-called romantic stories. They pick particularly gruesome subject matter as their backdrops, but conveniently forget the horror around them. Antony and Cleopatra? Two slimy schemers who got what they deserved in the midst of a horrible civil war. Romeo and Juliet? A fourteen and seventeen year old whose rash affair results in the death of seven people, including their own lives by suicide, and plunge their families to even more none-stop feuding. And now, Edward and Bella. But love triumphs over all, no matter how much it affects those around them, right?
Next, for a great love story, I have never seen two protagonists more intent on being uncomfortable around each other than these two. The movie should have been renamed Twilight: The Awkward Pause. The whole movie is nothing but one awkward situation after another, punctuated by stale, chick-flick cliches occasionally. I like a good love story, but these two seem to be constantly uncomfortable in each other's presence. Now before you all say, wait a minute, this is only the first chapter. Their love grows and blossoms and matures into this incredible, passionate romance. Well, I say, this is a movie. Oscar Wilde said brevity is the soul of wit. In other words, don't waste my damn time. The movie clocks in at over two hours. Casablanca, another great love story, tells of a more satisfying relationship in just under an hour and a half. Get on with it! And while we are on the subject of the most blasé love affair of all time, let's talk about the leads, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. There is absolutely no chemistry between them whatsoever. This is not the actors' fault, i think. I have seen them in other films and they are both competent actors in some of the other roles they have played. They just suck (no pun intended), in this one. They fall in love because the script says so. Never once did I feel any passion in their performance. If you want me to believe that an extremely introverted, shy girl is desperately in love with a monster, impossibly beautiful as he may be, it needs to come through. There is no thunderbolt from the blue. Just, hey, he's the best looking one here in the cast, he must be my true love.
Now, acting. I know Kristen Stewart can be a good actress. I've seen it. She was great as rocker Joan Jett in The Runaways. But in this film, there is nothing but boredom. Bella is narrating the picture and she sounds bored. She starts off with the hackneyed quote above, and it never gets any better. Harrison Ford famously monotonously read his narration in Blade Runnet, because he thought the tacked-on narration was stupid and redundant and he hoped they wouldn't use it. So what is Stewart's excuse? Her face throughout most of the film made me think she was severely constipated. I guess that goes right along with the movie's theme of discomfort. She doesn't act like a person desperately in love, rather like someone who took three Xanax 20 minutes before she goes to sleep. Even when she finally does wake up at the end, she is constantly blubbering and can't get a straight thought out. I don't think this is her fault, but rather that of the dirctor's. One of the director's biggest jobs in the film is to coax a good performance from their actors. Remember, this was before Kristen Stewart was a star from these movies. You think there would have been some incentive to wow us and not to phone it in. She has the capability, unless the movie I spoke of was a fluke. This is a passionate love story. I saw neither passion nor love. There's nothing particularly wrong with Pattinson's performance except that he, too, seems oddly dispassionate to his "particular brand of heroin" as he describes Bella. Doesn't that just make your heart melt ladies? I realize he is wrestling with his nature, but I just don't buy he is in love. He spends more time trying to push her away then going after what he really wants. That doesn't communicate love to me, but nausea. I can only conclude that the problem is, like all bad movies fundamentally, that the script is flawed.
Also, what about the supporting characters? Anyone other than Bella or Edward has the thankless job of propelling our two heroes into the next situation. There are some interesting possibilities. Her mother and father divorced, but semi-amicably it seems. Edward's family, why would vampires hide in a small community year after year after year? There seems to be an issue with their safety, but they keep coming back. Edward, who is at least 100 years old, acts like a seventeen-year-old the whole movie. He does not act like a being who has over 109 years of accumulated knowledge. What is the point of Jacob, her well-meaninged native-American friend? Bella's teenaged friends actually have some depth and are not cardboard cutouts. Yet we know so very little about any of them, almost to the point of frustration. All of these people have interesting situations and none of them get their fair due. We are introduced to the bad vampires, a trio of killers. Again, none of them do anything interesting. However, the actors who play them fall into the same trap that many actors do who play vampires. They act like they are Victorian aristocracy with bad British accents and scenery-chewing over-emoting.
But there is some good in this film. It gets mildly interesting when one of the bad vampires decides to hunt Bella and try to kill her. The Cullen family, who initially distrust her, rise up and defend her. But in the end, it isn't enough to save this turkey from its own dumbness. The sad thing is, this could have been a good flick. I love all sorts of vampire stories: Dracula, Interview With The Vampire, The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Underworld. But this is merely a dumb, love story written by someone who has never contemplated immortality and the curse it would be.
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