Twilight.
To just skip right to it, this movie makes me want to rip babies in half, but not in the good way.
I was talked into seeing this stinker (“movie” just doesn’t seem fair since effort goes into movies – even Double Dragon) on opening day. I agreed because I wanted to have an open mind about the whole Twilight fervor to see if there was really anything there worthwhile. This I blame on the Harry Potter franchise, which I hated until finally reading the first book almost a year after The Sorcerer’s Stone came out and fell madly retarded for it.
Within the first 10 minutes I realized with painful clarity that I was IN NO WAY a member of the target audience. Seriously, I would have felt way more masculine hanging out in a pink room playing tea-party with unicorns that fart rainbows and sing about having good manners.
The characters were all so painfully emo that none of them could look each other in the eye. Maybe it was to convey their eternal heartache, but I’d like to think that they were all so ashamed of their part in this turd that they just couldn’t face each other. This made for there being absolutely no chemistry between the characters. Instead, they all looked like a random collection of quivering-lipped strangers. (But aren’t we all really strangers? – FUCK, this emo shit is contagious!) I’d single out performances, but that’d be like pointing into the sewer and saying “that shit is less shitty than the other shit in that big pile of shit.”
As the two blocks-of-wood main characters (I refuse to remember their names) sit and each tries to emote harder than the other, we the audience are treated to the single stupidest thing ever put to film about vampires: these unholy, undead, creatures of death don’t die in the sun – THEY FUCKING SPARKLE! I cared more about Paul Reuben’s arm loss in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie than these undead scions of Liberace.
So after laughing inappropriately for roughly half of the film, I get more than a little desperate for something clever. ANYTHING clever. And, lo, I was granted the baseball scene. At first, the explanation for playing baseball in a thunderstorm because of the echoing noise of super-strong vamps connecting with the baseball provided the tiniest of handholds for that something clever. Then, the black hats of the movie – NO, stinker! – show up. Intriguing, but before I could start rooting for them there is suddenly a gust of wind that sends the scent of a human to the hunter vamp and, realizing this is no longer a friendly meeting, the two factions…pose?!?! What the ever-loving fuck?!?! Suddenly, Dracula: Dead and Loving It just became the scarier vampire tale.
Thank goodness my cell phone has solitaire on it. The rest of the movie is just “we don’t eat people, blah blah blah, we don’t really fight, blah blah blah, here’s some hints that we’ll eventually fight werewolves but it’ll still be way lamer than the Underworld series, blah blah blah.” Essentially, this movie doesn’t just rob, it downright mugs the vampire mythos of everything the vampire has been made out to be and leaves it with an emotionally wussy husk of itself.
So if you’re a fourteen year old girl, you might have an excuse to see this movie to come to grips with all those “new funny feelings” for the lead actor. Otherwise, stay the hell away and pray this whole franchise gets a great big glittery stake to the heart that will actually end it and not just fuel its emo fires.
That is all.
Haz-Matt