Catherine Hardwicke’s “Twilight”, adapted from the first novel in Stephanie Meyer’s highly successful teen lit franchise, plays like an overlong TV movie about teenage illiteracy, conservatism, abstinence and embarrassingly bad make-up. The characters in this movie unleash very bad dialogue unto the cinema screen I’m sure none of them have ever cracked open a book. They say things like “You’re my drug, my heroin” (paraphrased) while looking like buffed-up, metro extras not allowed on the set of “30 Days of Night”. Robert Pattinson may be the hottest, hunkiest teen heartthrob to hit the screen in years (judging by the response of the bizarrely salivating female fan base of the books and now the film) but his character, Edward Cullen, is also one of the lamest, most castrated vampires cinema has seen to date. Danny Huston would have him for an appetiser.
See, “Twilight” is two movies in one. On the one hand, it’s a familiar girl-meets-boy story. (The girl is Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, putting in a game performance and taking everything seriously.) Both are outsiders to a great extent. She wears little make-up; he wears lipstick and SPF 100. On the other hand, it’s a vampire movie, seeing as Edward belongs to a family of vampires. Since they like humans, the family feed only on animals; Edward refers to his dad as calling themselves “vegetarians”. Naturally, having an opening scene with a vampire hunting down a carrot instead of a deer would be less than exciting.
Now, I can handle a vampire movie that’s more romantic than gothic if it’s well told. “Twilight” isn’t. We see in one early scene Edward’s reaction to Bella as she enters the classroom; there’s slow-motion, flowing hair, and what looks to be a gag reflex. To the audience, it’s laughable. The film has severe structural and pacing problems. The film is far too indulging of the natural beauty of the setting and the unnatural beauty of its characters, who gaze into each other’s eyes in the school hallway, grassy meadows, in a treetop… After all, she is his “personal brand of heroin”.
The film wants us to align ourselves with the people-friendly vampires. However, during a crucial scene where there’s finally some potential for conflict, their actions fly in the face of logic and preservation. Being politically correct, human-loving creatures of the night is evidently higher on the agenda than making rational decisions.
I mentioned earlier that “Twilight” is also about sexual abstinence. There’s lots of looking, sighing, longing, fluttering and heart-beating, but as Edward tells Bella, “Once I start I won’t be able to stop” (he’s talking about sucking her blood but, you know, not). How I wished he would simply hold her and instead say: “Drink from me and live forever”. Not this guy. He’d rather climb a tree with her on his back, scaling the biggest tree (tree=phallus) in the forest to give her pleasure than do anything really dangerous, like touch her bum.
There’s more to deride still. I don’t mind films undermining established mythology, but I cannot take a vampire that glimmers as if coated with angel dust upon being struck by sunlight seriously. Especially when he bemoans his condition: “This is the skin of a killer!” Yes, well, or a fairy. Also consider the bad special effects (including 1990s wirework) that look like they’ve crossed over from an old “Star Trek” episode.
And then the make-up. Does no-one notice that the Cullens, with their bad hair and arctic complexion, look like the living dead? Probably not, since most secondary characters here behave and talk like they’re on “Seventh Heaven”. And speaking of low-rent, tired television, “Twilight” is really no better than a mediocre “Smallville” episode.
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