I had all sorts of jokes for the Twilight movie, most of them bad and centering on whether or not the impotent, permanently stuck, 17 year old Vampires were Priests – considering their penchant for staying in High School for over a century, but I’ll refrain. A few months ago, I was in London when Stephenie Meyer’s final installment of her Vampire series Twilight was released. Until then, I had never heard of her, the movie or this entire “underground” of fantasy chicklit. I was intrigued and since I was looking at a long flight back home I decided to download it onto my Kindle. This was one of the most boring, poorly written, anemic Vampire books I ever read. I gave up at the halfway point when Bella Swan discovers that the “love” of her life Edward Cullen was a Vampire.
Since I read it on my Kindle I don’t know what page number it was. But it must have been at least page 200 before she makes this “discovery.” Until that point all we get are 90 different ways of Meyer through Bella telling us how beautiful Edward was. This supposed relationship of a lifetime was based on nothing, but the fact that Edward was "gorgeous when he was mad, or ignoring her." The entire book is written as though a spoiled, insipid, shallow, 13 year old girl with 7th grade English skills wrote it. When I heard there was a movie based on this garbage, my reaction was – it can’t be worse than the book. Standard movie conventions would see to that.
Director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg almost managed to do not meet my low expectations for this film. It starts off with Bella narrating her journey to forks, and I rolled my eyes going, oh god, this isn’t going to be like the book is it? But mercifully Hardwicke keeps the Bella’s narration to a minimum. This is one of the ugliest looking films I’ve seen in a long time. It’s all dark, grey, depressing, everyone moves at a glacial pace, and have really bad makeup. The problem is, the visuals are almost exactly as Bella describes Forks, Washington in Meyer’s book. So I can’t necessarily blame cinematographer Elliot Davis for bringing all of this blandness to life. Hardwicke who is not an action director, does a poor job here showing all of the Vampire powers. Every time Edward runs up a tree or jumps around it so fake it pulls you right out of the film. Her strength as a director of teen dramas isn’t particularly on display either for the first 1/2 of this film there is no chemistry between Stewart and Pattinson.
This movie is slow, everyone moves around as though they are asleep, there’s no sense of urgency to any of the proceedings, and there’s just a feeling of lifelessness and no passion. The movie desperately wants you to believe that these two have a lot of heat between them but it’s all based on a couple of glances and Edward storming off. The entire basis for their "love" is forced. But a funny thing happened during the last 1/2 hour of this two hour "meditation." I found myself strangely starting to buy it, when there’s no reason to. Maybe my mind got so addled with boredom that it finally filtered in. Maybe it’s because interesting things finally started to happen. We get to meet the rest of the Cullen Clan, get to meet some of the evil vamps, get a little fight at the end, get to see Bella get thrown through a plate glass window – I really got a lot joy out of that. But all of this good stuff feels rushed and I would have liked to see more of Bella’s relationship with the Cullens, see her actually develop a friendship with Edward’s sister and brothers who clearly liked her. The movie clearly had time to focus on this aspect if Hardwicke had cut out the first 45 minutes of blank stares.
This movie succeeds in the fact that I’m now curious enough to maybe try and finish reading the book. I read Wikipedia and I know how stupid the next two books are, which is one of the reasons why ultimately gave up. But after seeing the film, I am curious to see if we get more of the Cullens in the book. The movie lacks any real bite, but it does give us a nibble.
Final Grade B-
EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 11.22.08