The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART II

** SPOILERS **

For ten or so brief minutes, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was one of the best films of 2012. Well, okay, not best, but the most cathartic. (Note definition 2 of 'cathartic.) It had all come down to this: assembled on a snowy field somewhere in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest were two armies. On one side, a battalion of "good" vampires led by the Cullen family and backed by a gathering of their now-good friends the werewolves. On the other, the evil Volturi, who have come to kill Renesmee [sic?] (No, that's actually how it's spelled, if you can believe that.), the half-human, half-vampire daughter of sucky-faced lovers maximus Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Swan) Cullen (Kristen Stewart). 

Renesmee's parents are now both vampires; Bella was turned by Edward as she died giving birth in the wretched and abominable Breaking Dawn Part I, a movie I'd have reviewed had it not broken my brain, my spirit and all my relative good will towards the Twilight Saga. But because she was born before Bella turned bloodsucker, Renesmee's existence as a halfbreed is a loophole that could save her life, if only the Volturi, who think she's a full underage vampire, which are the worst kind of vampires, would listen, and man, is this complicated and weird...

Anyway, the head Volturi (Michael Sheen in full poncy preening mode), seems open to testimony as to what exactly Renesmee is and why she, her parents, her parents' vampire family and friends, and their smelly puppy pals should live. He's not, really. The agenda is to kill them all, but the vampires all came a long way for this vampire prom and they're all keen to admire each other's outfits. Negotiations swiftly break down, vampire violence commences, and all of a sudden Breaking Dawn Part II gets good. Well, again, not good, but cathartic. Vampires fight kind of gay; they like to fling themselves into the air at each other, limbs and teeth and tongues flaring, but this time, they're fighting for keeps. By keeps, I mean heads. 

The vampires start decapitating each other left and right, and the body count is delightful. Beloved members of the Cullen clan like Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and big name Volturi like Caius (Jamie Campbell Bower), Jane (Dakota Fanning) and Irina (Maggie Grace) all viciously and hilariously lose their heads. The wolves get in on the action and maul Volturi but also get put down with extreme prejudice. Already super strong and superfast, each vampire also has an extra superpower like mind control or Bella's newfound power to emit force fields. The word for this is overkill. As for Michael Sheen, he gets tag teamed by Bella and Edward, and not in a good way. All of a sudden, all of that misery, all of those deplorable hours of audience punishment known as the previous Twilight movies, had a ballsy, bloodthirsty payoff. And then, after all of that enjoyable slaughter... Breaking Dawn Part II revealed it had no teeth. It was all a dream! It's what could have happened. No, instead, the Volturi say peace out and go back to Italy. Weak! Totally, totally weak. Damn you, Twilight.

Breaking Dawn Part II picks up right on the heels of Part I: Bella is now a vampire like she wanted and plotted for all along. She's also a teen mom with a newborn halfbreed daughter who, in lieu of using an actual infant actor, the filmmakers rendered in creepy CGI. Renesmee somehow is some sort of telepath and grows incredibly rapidly: from 7 minutes old to 7 years old (played by Mackenzie Foy) in the span of a few weeks. In perhaps the grossest of all developments, noble werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) "imprinted" on infant Renesmee, "falling in love" with that thing and is now unable to leave her side. To her credit, Bella greeted this development with the appropriate amount of disgust. She also didn't like "Nessie", Jacob's nickname for her: "You named my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?" Jacob transferred his Bella obsession in all the prior movies to her daughter, his future girlfriend and probably wife, and this is repulsive, let's move on.

The bellyaching in Breaking Dawn Part II revolves around what the Volturi will do when they find out about Renesmee, which happens rather quickly, though the Volturi take their time doing something about it (they must have all spent weeks shopping for fancy new Druid robes for their trip to Forks, Washington). The Cullens fear the Volturi will think Renesmee is a vampire who was made immortal as a child, because those are the worst kind of vampires, who don't age and mature. And yes, we all remember Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire so fair point, Volturi. The Cullens decide they need "Witnesses" to attest that Renesmee isn't a Dunst, so they set off to get their friends around the world to come down to Forks and fight the Volturi if need be. Straining the red eye contact lens budget, the Cullens recruit some Brazilian vampires, some African vampires, Irish vampires, and even a couple of dudes from Transylvania Jacob nicknamed Dracula 1 and 2. Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies gets to be a vampire. So does the evil nanny serial killer in The Following. This International House of Vampires surprisingly get along just fine with the werewolves. All of that vampire-werewolf muckety-muck is so New Moon, after all. But the United Colors of Vampire Bennaton do agree: they all hate the Italians.

Finally getting to become a vampire is what Kristen Stewart waited four years and four movies for and now we have irrefutable proof K-Stew had been holding back on us. Breaking Dawn Part II is Kristen Stewart Unchained and she runs, growls, leaps, snarls her way into deserving her Razzies for Worst Female Performance without question. Called upon to be angry, proud, feral, maternal, sexy, and heroic as the new nosferatu Bella Cullen, Stewart manages to be none of those things while still occupying the screen as some sort of identifiable matter. Not helping Stewart one bit is the cinematography, which lovingly photographs the wilderness of Washington State as well as all of the other actors, but seems to go out of its way to render Stewart's face as an eyesore. Much mockery has been made of Claire Danes' cry face on Homeland but Stewart's repeated "grrr, vampire angry face" is a meme-worthy sight to Share on social media. Vampire or no, Bella remains a black hole, a suck zone of fun and watchability. Her groan-inducing sex scenes with Edward are treated as a necessary evil the movie depicts and moves on from as quickly as possible.

Edward is no longer the bad boy he once was, completely pussy whipped by this point by his surly vampire bride. He's now the sexy vampire soccer dad of every tween's dreams. "Bella, I've had a bad habit of underestimating you," loverboy Cullen confesses. "Every obstacle that's been in your way, I didn't think you'd overcome." Wow. What a dreamboat. This guy is what the ladies have been fantasizing about all these years? Jacob fares slightly better, except no, he doesn't, because he's sniffing after their Dora the Explorer-watching-aged daughter. The best person in the movie is and always was Bella's father Charlie the Sheriff (Billy Burke), whom Bella lies to continually about her new red eyes and being dead and all. Charlie suspects, but also knows deep down, ah, fuck it. He's got his own show now. Revolution is a hit and on it, he's got another annoying teenage girl to deal with. He's okay not knowing about any of this vampire nonsense. Charlie is especially okay without Jacob stripping in front of him like Magic Mike and then turning into a werewolf in the movie's most hilariously uncomfortable moment.

The marriage between Bella and Edward and all the accoutrements that come with it are shiny, wish-fulfillment BS. The Cullens give Bella and Edward their own multi-million dollar country home deep in the woods, fully-furnished, complete with walk-in closets stocked with designer wardrobe. This is a ridiculous fantasy: two teenagers can get married, be parents, have all this luxury, wealth, and don't have to earn any of it. They have no responsibilities, they never need to work, they stay young and attractive eternally, they have a kid that they don't have to actually parent because it becomes a grown adult in 7 years and already found the doting mate pledged to take care of her and take her off their hands, and they can live happily ever after with superpowers forever. 

Ultimately, it was foolish to fall for Breaking Dawn Part II's okeydoke, to momentarily believe, no matter much you wanted to, that this saga would end with the cast of vampires we've watched for five movies decapitated and burning on an icy tundra. The Twilight Saga is and always was a sugar-in-the-eyes romance; it could only truly end the way it does: with Edward and Bella sitting on a flowery field pledging their eternal love for each other. "I have a present for you," Bella tells Edward, before telepathically showing him clips from the previous four Twilight movies, one last bit of navel-gazing from a couple who are unwilling and incapable of recognizing anything greater or more important in the world than themselves. In the final bit of navel-gazing, Breaking Dawn Part II then ends the Twilight Saga with an extended credits sequence for not just the cast of Part II but for every single person that has ever been in a Twilight movie.

But it's over. And with the conclusion of The Twilight Saga, we, the people of Earth living and still to be born, sincerely hope the unspoken promise of the end of this franchise holds true: No more Twilight movies.

Forever.

Note: I rented and began watching Breaking Dawn Part II at 8:40pm. About an hour in, I blacked out. Next thing I knew, I woke up and it was 3:30am. Breaking Dawn Part II induced a total system shutdown.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II - It's Better than Ambien!

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

"From now on, I'm Switzerland, okay?!"

The Twilight Saga has introduced the world to sparkly emo vampires and chiseled Native American werewolves, but Eclipse, the third cinematic entry in the franchise, brings forth a creature the world truly may not have been ready for: a "good" Twilight movie. "Good" being a subjective term, of course. Perhaps "entertaining" may be a more apt compliment. Or simply, "not horrible" if we must be unkind. Regardless, compared to the two previous movies in The Twilight Saga, Catherine Hardwicke's blue-tinged eye roller Twilight and Chris Weitz's gold-tinged dreary dreck New Moon, David Slade's efficient, action-packed Eclipse is the belle of the ball. If one must watch a Twilight movie for whatever reason, Eclipse is the one to see.

Slade, the director of the vampire action-horror gorefest 30 Days of Night, reportedly made some unkind comments towards the Twilight franchise before agreeing to helm Eclipse. If so, it seems his outsider's perspective towards the material really helped the finished product. (Any disdain Slade may have for Twilight was perhaps most visible in the opening title "Eclipse", which was curiously not preceded by "The Twilight Saga".)  Overwrought teen drama between the three lead characters comes with the territory - it's the heart and soul, stock and trade of the Twilight Saga -  but Slade kept a surprisingly light touch in those many scenes, keeping them moving and staking an undercurrent of humor in even the sappiest moments instead of wallowing in it all to the point of misery like Chris Weitz did. (Bella breaking her hand punching Jacob in the face, and Jacob's explanation to Bella's father were comedic highlights.) Slade also ramped up the action to a satisfying degree, with a horde of vampire "Newborns" attacking the combined forces of the Cullen family and werewolves in Eclipse's climactic confrontations. Vampire on vampire violence, vampire on werewolf violence, dismemberments, decapitations, Slade successfully goes for broke when the carnage starts.

New Moon took the questionable position that Everybody Loves Bella (Kristen Stewart). In Eclipse, Bella Swan's choices have narrowed down to two, although in her mind, heart, and her secret womanly places no man or monster has yet plumbed the depths of, there's really only her one true love, the vampire Edward Cullen (Rob Pattinson). And yet, out there howling at the moon and peeing in the bushes, is her other suitor, the noble werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Jacob had long since narrowed the field of Bella boyfriend wanna bes, having cock blocked Bella's classmate who wanted to date her in one of the only amusing moments in New Moon. By Eclipse, it's just down to him and Edward for Bella's affections.

Eclipse is bookended with a couple of lovey-dovey rolling around in the sunlit grass scenes between Edward and Bella that would make Anakin and Amidala vomit, but these moments are a big step forward for everyone's favorite couple. Finally, they seem generally comfortable and happy around each other (or as happy as that sullen mope Bella seems to get), compared to how outright miserable they seemed in each others' presence in the previous films. Edward has chilled out, seriously. Gone are his wild mood swings and various guilt complexes. The remaining sources of stress in Edward's otherwise ideal eternal life are the vampires coming to kill Bella and Bella continually badgering him about turning her into a vampire. Edward's curious solution is to keep asking Bella to marry him, which Bella finally agrees to when Edward describes the old-timey way he'd propose if he were still alive and if it was still the 19th century.

High school graduation is coming. ("After all, how many times do we get to graduate high school?" is an in-joke at lunch only the Cullens and Bella get.) Bella's uncool classmates have made it to the cool Cullen table and get invited to the cool Cullen house parties via Bella, with Academy Award nominee Anna Kendrick as the valedictorian of their senior class. In her commencement address, Kendrick is just one of several characters who speechify directly and indirectly to Bella regarding her potential life choices. "Now is the time for us to make mistakes," Kendrick muses. You know, the kind of mistakes young people make that aren't permanent, that they can regret but learn and improve from.

Bella misses the point entirely, singularly focused on her obsession with becoming a vampire and never wavering from this madness, despite Edward's surprisingly rational and poor, lovelorn Jacob's multiple attempts to talk her out of it. The same conversation gets repeated over and over throughout Eclipse between the three; essentially: "Bella, don't become a vampire." "Nope, I'm gonna do it." Jacob has more than a few temper tantrums and scenes where he storms off from Bella stonewalling him. Finally, this culminates in the aforementioned second sunlit rolling around in the grass scene where Bella makes her final, resolute "I am woman, hear me state unequivocally I'm becoming a vampire" speech to Edward, preceded by her logic that she never felt she fit in anywhere in the world until she found solace and kindred spirits in the company of the sexy undead. The musical score cues soar to meet Bella's declaration with "rah rah" hilarity, as if the movie is telling the audience it agrees that this dumb girl's fierce determination to die and become a blood sucking monster is the best life choice she could make for herself.

The rivalry between Jacob and Edward is a source of endless humor. They just don't like each other, those two. (Edward does have a point about Jacob needing to put on a shirt.) Their constant shouting matches, insult trading (complete with digs at how bad each other smells), and nose-to-nose snarling stare downs makes one wonder if it's really the vampire and werewolf in love with each other and they're just passing Bella back and forth between them. Seriously, you two, just kiss already. Jacob and Edward finally reach a detente in a pitched tent (any subtext there?) when Jacob cuddles with a freezing Bella to keep her warm, which Edward takes great umbrage to initially. (This comes complete with Jacob's shameless line "After all, I am hotter than you.") But after some straight talk between vampire and werewolf, each monster sees that the other monster isn't such a bad guy after all.

In the end, Jacob and Edward are united in their desire to keep Bella safe from killer Newborn vampires, even though Bella ultimately chooses Edward, as she must. You can't blame Jacob for trying, though maybe you could point out that Jacob insists Bella is in love with him despite any real indication that this is so, besides her wide-eyed gasps whenever he takes his shirt off. Maybe it's the way she pets him in wolf form that has Jacob so convinced. I gotta say, Jacob's final plea to Bella, "You belong with me. It would be as easy as breathing" is where wolf boy blew it. Dude, you're 17. Girls don't want easy reliability at your age. They want a little danger. Jacob's a good boy, maybe too good a boy. But here's a perk: in wolf form, he can always lick his own balls.

All right, enough about those three. There's other stuff going on in Eclipse: The main villain from the whole Twilight Saga, the redheaded vampire Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard as more petulant than menacing) has been trying to kill Bella for three movies now. This time, she and her new loverboy vampire assemble an army of Newborns to attack the unsuspecting town of Forks. This causes great consternation among the Cullen family, who get to show a lot more personality and are rewarded with a lot more screen time in this movie, including some amusing flashbacks to how some of them became vampires. I liked the revelation that the blond Cullen who always had a rod up his ass is a strategic genius and has a Texan accent. Who knew? I also liked the female Cullen who always hated Bella and who isn't Ashley Greene's story of how she was turned vampire and that she basically became the Bloofer Lady from Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The Cullens and their usual mortal enemies, the Earthy pack of denim shorts-clad Never Nude Native American werewolves, form an alliance and train together to fight the Newborns; this is perhaps a curious tactical error for the vampires as they basically gave the wolves a download on all of their fighting techniques. Jacob also brings Bella to a werewolf bonfire pow wow, where their chief tells them the story of the first time the werewolves met a vampire and what sparked their war, complete with Foreshadowing from the story of how a Native American princess sacrificed her life that gives Bella the idea of how distract Victoria so Edward can kill her. (But not to the point of Bella sacrificing her life.)  The entertaining carnage that ensues between the Newborns, Cullens, and werewolves also draws the attention of everybody's favorite vampire dandy fops, the Volturi, lead by Dakota Fanning. The Volturi are a sore thumb in this movie, with their faux-Shakespearian dialogue delivered with all of the skill of a high school drama club.

That there will be two more movies made from the final, and from what I've been told by my lady friends, the least enjoyed and rather reviled book, "Breaking Dawn", casts a dark shadow on Eclipse. Frankly, Eclipse provided a perfectly fine cinematic ending for The Twilight Saga. It concluded all the main plot threads, including Bella's arch enemy Victoria literally beside herself before Edward burned her to ash, the vampires and werewolves getting along, and Bella choosing to marry Edward and become a bloodsucking, unholy creature of the night instead of being a normal, well-adjusted person. Seems like everything wrapped up nicely. But when there are so many dump trucks full of money to be made from Twilight, there's just no chance of going out of a high note, is there?  I guess if I'm curious about anything, it's how Bella's good guy father, Charlie the Sheriff, will take it when he finds out his daughter isn't just getting married, but will soon become a monster breathing men would kill. And just when he was starting to like Edward Cullen too.

Twilight Saga: New Moon (*1/2)

TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

"The wolf's out of the bag."

The Twilight Saga: New Moon goes about its business under the mistaken assumption that everyone in the audience is blessed/cursed with eternal life.  This is a looong movie. Long.  And boring. Interminably paced and bursting at the seams with overwrought, wretched teen drama, New Moon is a grueling endurance test with an ending that only promises even more interminably paced, overwrought, wretched teen drama in next year's sequel.  In the opening scenes, Edward Cullen speaks about how much he envies humans for their varied means of committing suicide.  By the time the credits finally rolled, I had a pretty good understanding of what pretty boy Cullen was talking about.

New Moon could be retitled Everybody Loves Bella. Bella Swan is in almost every scene; sought after, courted, abandoned, threatened, and tolerated by every other character in the movie.  Everybody Loves Bella, but we still don't know why.  Kristen Stewart plays Bella as a stubborn, sullen, difficult bore suffering from night terrors and adrenalin addiction.  She pines for Edward Cullen with a dangerously unhealthy level of obsession, composing self-absorbed email after undeliverable email to Edward's clairvoyant sister Alice (who must have foreseen her Inbox being spammed and canceled her email account).  Considering how much blunt force trauma Bella suffers throughout New Moon from being thrown through a table, flying off a motorcycle into a boulder, and cracking her skull on a cliff wall under water, what Bella needs most isn't Edward's eternal love, but a CAT scan.

The love of Bella's life, Edward Cullen, is again the stuff of tween dreams. Edward is the vampire who can slow-motion walk against the wind, even when there's no wind.  This time, Edward swaps his wild emotional mood swings in the first Twilight movie for a bizarre fixation with killing himself if Bella ever dies, a morbid trait he passes onto Bella as the movie bludgeons the audience with obvious references to Romeo and Juliet. After he leaves her, the specter of Edward (lets go ahead and call it Head Edward since it's a pretty shameless riff on Head Six haunting Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica) haunts Bella's waking life throughout New Moon.  The most LOL-inducing moment in the movie is the quick scene of Edward in Rio crushing his cell phone and about to burst into tears when he thinks Bella is dead. If there's one thing I do somewhat marvel at about Edward Cullen, it's how Robert Pattinson is able to play him as if he's about to burst into tears at any moment.

With Edward out of the way, the object of Bella's affection becomes Jacob Black, played by a ripped, chiseled and jacked Taylor Lautner.  As Twilight did regarding Edward Cullen being an unholy bloodsucking vampire, New Moon wastes a lot of time being very coy about Bella discovering a Very Shocking Reveal that absolutely everyone in the audience already knows going in: Jacob Black is an American werewolf in Washington State.  Lautner acquits himself well in New Moon, playing Jacob Black as a stand up good guy who, unfortunately for him, is just Bella's rebound man. The first chance Bella got, she literally ran back to Edward. "Don't make me choose," Bella tells Jacob. "It's him. It was always him."  Aw, poor Jacob.  He deserves better.  He's a good boy.  Here, have a cookie.

With the vampires moved out of Forks for most of the dragging middle act of New Moon, Bella and we get to know the local pack of werewolves Jacob runs with.  While the vampires are allowed to have their own personal style, the werewolves subscribe to a uniform appearance of short cropped hair, being perpetually and inappropriately shirtless, and wearing denim shorts as if they are Never Nudes from Arrested Development.  (Come to think if it, judging from the rippling pecs and eight pack abs on display, Tobias Funke would be hungry like the wolf.)  When they transform into werewolves, their denim shorts are shown to tear completely off (unlike the Incredible Hulk's shape-changing purple pants).  It begs the question of what the werewolves' budget is for denim shorts, since they must go through at least a pair a day.  The shirtless-ness is generally amusing, except for one scene between Bella and shirtless Jacob that takes place in the rain where I felt terrible for the actors, especially Lautner, who was visibly shivering under the torrent of the rain machines.

Jacob warns Bella off of being with him for the same reason Edward bails on her; because, being monsters, a moment of losing control could be tragic and fatal for Bella.  Bella never seriously considers cuddling up to the wolves; she's first and foremost a vampire kind of girl.  When Bella confronts Jacob's dawgs and slugs one, Jacob springs to her defense.  The wolves tear into each other but a scene later, while snacking on fresh baked muffins and making wolf puns, Jacob and the other wolf are all cool, dawg.  Maybe, as Conan O'Brien joked, this was left on the cutting room floor:

Besides the werewolves, New Moon introduces us to the vampire ruling council in Italy, the Volturi, which must be Latin for "Vampire Dandy Fops."  The Volturi still dress like Marie Antoinette is the Queen of France. The Volturi include Michael Sheen as their leader, who was a werewolf himself in the Underworld movies and now gets to play a vampire on the flip side.  Dakota Fanning is the other famous face among the Volturi but she isn't given much to do except stare into the camera and make big saucer eyes.  We're told the Volturi enforce the vampire laws, the main one being they don't obviously kill humans.  Explain then why the last thing we're shown of the Volturi is them leading a gaggle of human tourists into their throne room where they're rather obviously slaughtered?

A bit of unfinished business is carried over from Twilight into New Moon, including the evil redhead vampire coming after Bella as revenge for Edward killing her boyfriend in the first movie.  The main story continuing from the end of Twilight is Bella badgering Edward about wanting to be turned into a vampire.  There is simply no talking her out of it and she even got most of the Cullens to okay it. On one hand, Bella's probably already sick of her perptually throbbing loins and Edward's quivering any time they suck face.  Plus, no matter how much they like her, all of her various monster friends still feel like they want to kill her.  I suppose the only practical solution really is for Bella to just become das vampyre and be done with it.  It must get old being the only human in the monster mash.

I've been a pretty good sport about the so-called "Twilight Saga".  I harbor no ill-will towards this franchise or its legions of female Twi-hards.  I gave the first Twilight movie a reasonable pass.  In fact, there are some positive aspects to New Moon: It's shot better and looks prettier than its grimy, monochrome predecessor.  What little action there is, mainly werewolves chasing blurry-running vampires through the forests, is stepped up from before.  There are a couple of amusing moments sprinkled throughout, especially Bella going to the movies with the jock dude who always liked her and Jacob cock blocking him outside the theater.  The Cullen clan still seem like pretty cool cats, even though there's a lot less of them in New Moon.  Drop dead gorgeous Ashley Greene livens up every scene she's in as Alice Cullen, the hottest and bounciest of the vampires.  Greene and Lautner have fun with their mutual vampire/werewolf loathing. Still, those are brief respites of interest from how slow, redundant and boring New Moon is to the male non-Twi-hard.

As for the most important question of all: Am I Team Edward or Team Jacob?  Let's just say I don't hate the players, but in New Moon's case, I hate the game.  New Moon really screws the pooch.

Twilight (**1/2)

TWILIGHT

Looking Good Enough to Eat

Twilight could have used a little bit of levity. The story of a pretty, sullen teenage girl falling in love with a shiny (in the sunlight) broody vampire doesn't have to be so gloomy. Case in point is when Edward Cullen brought Bella Swan home to meet his vampire family. Hosting their first human guest ever, the vampires went all out and cooked up what looked like a really delicious Italian feast. (Me: Oooh, is that pancetta? I love pancetta) Watching vampires dance around the kitchen like Giada Di Laurentiis was kind of fun. It could have turned into a delightful dinner party: a bunch of vampires who don't eat human food sitting around the table watching the human girl eat. Even better if they all made awkward jokes about eating humans. But no, Bella killed all the fun that could have been had by saying she ate beforehand, ruining the dinner party for everyone. 

Twilight's first half hour where Bella moves from Phoenix to rainy, glum but beautiful Forks, Washington was pretty slow. Bella takes her sweet time discovering what every single person in the audience knows going in - that the mysterious Edward Cullen and his pale gothy flock are the unholy undead. Nosferatu. Das vampyres. Once she finds out though, and this is after Edward saves her from being squished by a truck and gang raped by a bunch of drunk assholes, all the while confounding her with his wild mood swings, she's refreshingly all for it. Bella and Edward are a good match for each other. They're both pale, attractively angular, self-centered, and kind of dull.

To her credit, Bella asked a lot of questions about Edward, his origins, his powers and the sordid details of Twilight's version of vampires. We learn that Edward is 114 years old, super fast and strong, doesn't sleep, claims to read minds, and likes to spend more time in trees than Tarzan or the Viet Cong. Also, his vampire clan enjoys playing baseball during thunderstorms. The Cullens actually seem like pretty cool cats once you get past their douchey gothness and blank stares. They live in a posh glass house but it seems like none of them throw stones. That the Cullen brood spend their eternal lives in a living hell of going to high school is an intriguing idea touched upon but not explored. 

Twilight is surprisingly chaste. Some kissing, just a little neck nuzzling, but no wham, bam, thank you, Dracula. Vampires are usually hardcore about getting in the ladies's knickers as well as their necks, but not Edward, who has self-control issues regarding blood sucking. The Bella and Edward love affair seemed rather subdued. Despite Bella's occasional voice-over declarations of eternal love for Edward, their relationship wasn't quite the bubbling cauldron of romantic intensity it ought to have played as.

I sure don't blame Bella for falling in with the bloodsuckers. Author Stephenie Meyer (whose cameo in the diner was a 7.5 on the Stan Lee scale) gave Bella the following choices for friends: the vampires, Native Americans descended from wolves, or a gay Asian kid, two whiny chicks, and a doofy faux jock. Hanging out with the monsters breathing men would kill was clearly the best choice for a girl looking for some excitement in the sopping wet town of Forks. I liked the squinty glares the Native Americans and the vampires traded whenever they ran into each other.

Unfortunately, any time Bella walked against the wind riled up the hungry and the horny of the vampires. This lead to a tacked on subplot about evil vampire serial killers who suddenly wanted to make a meal of Edward's human girlfriend. The plot holes came fast and furious as the Cullens decided to split up to protect Bella. Some of Cullens drove Bella back to sunny Phoenix (long drive seems to take moments) while Edward lead the others on a decoy mission. Bella somehow gets away from her Cullen bodyguards when the evil vampire called her while holding her mother hostage, although he apparently didn't have her at all. Then Edward Cullen inexplicably appeared out of nowhere to save Bella with vampire violence before the other Cullens suddenly came on the scene. This was Heroes-level lack of attention to details and logistics. The explanation to Bella's parents of how she wound up in the hospital in Phoenix with a broken leg, cuts and bloody bitemarks makes even less sense.

Considering there were 7 Cullen vampires the whole time, their splitting up made no sense. The Cullens could have just stuck together and killed their enemy. They still could have worked in Edward fighting the evil vampire mano e mano. Also, these Twilight vampires sure fight gay. A lot of grabbing, holding, gaping mouths and flicking tongues. I did like the hottest of the Cullen girls, the little dark-haired one with clairvoyance, jump-straddling the bad guy and snapping his neck. I also thought the Cullens dismembering the villain and dancing around his bonfire of death was pretty neat.

The moral dilemma in Twilight revolves around Edward's self-esteem issues as a vampire, which are in direct conflict with Bella's breathless desire to vamp it up. It's an interesting spin. Edward is steadfastly against Bella becoming "a monster" like him but Bella doesn't care; she wants it all, the even-paler skin, the permanent glitter in the sunlight, and the power to climb trees with superspeed by herself. Edward says no and for once, the vampire is the one with his head on straight. The vampire's making a lot of sense. Either way, they're screwed, because Bella seems like the kind of chick who'll find a way to get what she wants eventually. Meanwhile, Bella's underwritten parents are completely in the dark about their daughter practically having vampire in-laws. I didn't even realize until the end Bella's mom is Nina Meyers from 24. Jack Bauer suddenly bursting into the room and shooting her in the head would have been awesome.

It should have been a lot more hot blooded but Twilight mainly accomplished what it set out to do, which is launch a movie franchise for teen girls to call their own. But if you ask me, this vampire/human teen romance stuff has been done before and better. Young ladies, if you want forbidden romance and heartbreak plus a wicked sense of humor and a superior supporting cast to go along with it, you'd all be better off putting down your Twilight books and popping in seasons 1-3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. I think you'll agree, your precious Edward is no Angel and Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers.