Project Valentine, Day 9: Twilight

Hold on tight, spider monkey.

OK, I admit it, I created the My Creepy Valentine block of movies specifically for the Twilight movies.  One day in the break room at work, I was eating my lunch and talking with my co-worker Susan, whose daughter is a big Twilight fan.  Susan had read some of my Project Horror blog entries, so I mentioned the upcoming Project Valentine to her, and she suggested I watch the Twilight series.  Really, there was no way I was ever going to watch them otherwise, which made it an especially genius idea.

Man, oh man, oh man.  Twilight.  I really want to give this movie a fair shake, so in spite of all the cultural attachments that it's picked up, I tried to go in with a very open mind.  Of course, the good news about the millions of words that have been written about this series is that by now, pretty much everything has been said that can be said, and I can forgo too much analysis and just give some opinions.

Have you ever looked at the discussion boards on the Internet Movie Database?  If not, don't.  Here is a summary of the two major discussion topics:

1. THIS MOVIE SUCKS
   NO IT DOESN'T IT RULES AND YOU SUCK
2. So-and-so is a fat ugly bitch and also where can I find naked pictures of her

But then there's also a third kind of thread, and that is the rabid fan thread, of which Robert Pattinson must be one of the current leaders.  I already knew that Edward Cullen was a big crush object, but I seriously had no idea that Cedric Diggory from the Harry Potter movies had such a fierce following.  Most of Kristen Stewart's discussion topics tend to fall into #2 from above.

Freaking Twilight.

OK, things I liked - the location shooting was really pretty.  Yay, Pacific Northwest!  Between Up in the Air, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I've grown a pretty good little crush on Anna Kendrick, so it was a pleasant surprise to see her in the movie.  Yay, cute brunettes!  The Quileute tribe is a real tribe in the Pacific Northwest, and really does have a legend that they are descended from wolves.  Yay, anthropological accuracy!  Um...  Hmm.  Oh!  Peter Facinelli, the actor who played Carlisle Cullen, is pretty good.  Yay, talented Italian-American actors!

Now for the rest.  Y'all, Kristen Stewart is terrible.  There's this thing that she does, and I don't know if it's a conscious acting choice on her part or just something that she does for real, but after nearly every line, she does one of those little "laughs" that's kind of a sharp little exhale.  If it was just once or twice, I'd be nitpicking to notice it, but it's seriously after almost every single line.  Also, I know that any adaptation of a book necessarily leaves some things out, but watching this just felt... incomplete.  I never really got why Edward and Bella instantly fell so intensely for each other, and never really felt any sense of danger when James was tracking her.

I have to ask this, too:  why, in the 2000's, do we still have high school movies coming out where one of the characters is a reporter hustling to get a story for the school paper?  Do schools even have newspapers anymore?  I've been out of high school a while, but even then, our school paper came out like once every six weeks, and the stories tended to be of the "Football Team Completes Season" variety, nothing too exciting.

I'll save more general thoughts until I've seen the whole series.  Tomorrow, New Moon!

RATING - Oh man.  Twilight.  It doesn't matter what I rate you, really.  Let's say two out of five.

LESSON -  Take the vampirism from this movie and all you're left with is Ike and Tina right before Tina refuses to eat the cake.  (That reference will be lost on Twilight's target audience.)  Got daughters?  Lock 'em up.

PS - Enjoy this! It's actually pretty spot-on.