By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

I thought of all the different ways to review this movie and none of them seemed to be the right way to do it.

You see, the overriding emphasis on what I want to get across about TWILIGHT is that this film was for sure, absolutely, positively not made for me. I am a 33 year old male who hasn’t read any of the books written by Arizona native Stephenie Meyer and have no inclination to read the series based on a vampire and his human ward/lady friend. But that’s alright, I would come to feel by the end of this movie, because of one fact alone: this is show business and this film is in the business of appealing to young ladies. It does it so well, in fact, that I dare say this should be the one movie on prepubescents’ lips come Monday morning as the one film that has defined their year.

For the rest of us, however, this movie isn’t completely awful. Lord knows that the dialog is pretty bad, the characterization of our human love interest is beyond hackneyed and has been done before in countless other angst-y teenagers who hate life and whose parents just “don’t understand them” to say nothing of Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) weirdly distant father who only adds to the movie’s forced narrative that this is, at its heart, a movie about teenage alienation. Like I said, it’s been done before in countless ways before in a lot better films. However, what I can say, like Edward tells Bella at the film’s prom scene that this all a rite of passage she deserves and needs to be a part of, is that this film is for the ladies.

This movie is going to be the gateway drug (and, really, everyone out there who will find themselves sitting in the theater as Edward (Robert Pattinson) tells Bella that she’s his brand of heroin try not to completely fall out of your seat as your belly ripples with the giggles that are sure to ensue) for many disenfranchised teenage girls who don’t have a voice in the current cinema climate.

The story of a young Bella who leaves the sunny and sandy shores of Scottsdale for the wet confines of Washington state, adjusting to life in a new high school and finding the boy of her dreams, only to find out he’s a member of the undead, is a relatively innocuous one. What we have here is a fairly basic flicks that has a shroud of vampirism tossed over it. And you know what? It’s a hoot. It’s a genuinely interesting film as we progress deeper into Meyer’s mythos, finding out what this brand of vampire is capable of doing, how they live, what makes them special, what threatens their existence, etc… It’s the exploration of these smaller bits that elevates this film from just being a shoddily produced cash-in.

However, there are elements in the movie that would tell you otherwise.

The wire work, effects and anything else that required even the slightest bit of modern 21st century technology to enhance was abhorrent. There are moments, for example in the penultimate fight sequence (and a sequence that answers the question of What would James Dean look like if he were in a roughshod martial arts film?)  between Edward and bad-boy James (Cam Gigandet) was nothing if but a comedic romp into bad action blocking. As well, Taylor Lautner’s performance as Jacob Black gets my Anthony Hopkins Award for racial blurring as that poor kid must have been given the C. Thomas Howell SOUL MAN treatment with enough self-tanner to make his olive skin turn a deep rusty hue in order to be the Native American representative of the werewolves. The aforementioned dialogue gets really, really bad at times and there’s even the sense that the players in this movie weren’t really given the ability to take Meyers’ work any higher than teenage melodrama. It’s more like a pilot for the CW at certain points in this film. And I cannot stress enough the grating attitude that Bella seems to carry with her throughout the film. My main issue with this is if you create a protagonist who is so easily pained with her own life that she projects it whenever possible how could anyone else, besides teenagers whose sole sphere of experience spans life in only two insular stages: inside of school and outside of school, identify with this woman? The answer, if you’re following close enough, is that you’re not. This book, this film, this series, speaks to some elusive trigger mechanism in young teenage ladies and it’s clear to anyone looking at the screen that unless you shop at Hollister or Hot Topic there’s not much you’re going to get out of this.

There are  other members of the film, though, who actually do contribute to this film and elevate it just a little bit more than just a campy excuse to be doused in white flower. Peter Facinelli is one such actor and, to be quite honest, surprised me. His delivery isn’t stiff. He doesn’t lower his head and look forward to talk like some members of his vampy family. He speaks normally and acts, literally, as if he’s a vampire but just happens to live in a human’s world. Dare I say it I would have rather followed his story more than I wanted to follow everyone else’s. Rachelle Lefevre, one of the other “bad” vampires of this film, is a delight. She’s actually quite alluring and plays her role in a way that makes you feel a) like she could treat your neck like a piece of skirt steak and you would let her willingly and b) she is able to project a hint of evil without being obnoxious.

In all, TWILIGHT is going to make millions off the backs of young girls who have been in need of a DARK KNIGHT for themselves. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier for them. This film does not try to be all things to all people, it does not want me to like it nor does it try too hard to, it hits the right emotional notes of those in its targeted sights and there is no way you could walk out of that film thinking that there is no way an audience could love that film because when you consider that in the land of show business this is one property that knows its market.

Comments: 1 Comment