Twilight: Rating: 0 stars

Like Romeo and Juliet, if Juliet had Tourette's and Romeo had fangs.

Twilight (2008)
2008 · PG-13 · Fantasy
Reviewed July 3, 2008

I think my family is starting to worry about me, because I keep renting movies I know I'm going to hate. I've been fielding gentle, worried questions about my masochistic tendencies, and I think an intervention might be in the works. After this movie, I might have to take their advice and stop up the Fountain of Fug for awhile; I think I may finally have had enough.

Of course, it would be Twilight that pushed me over the edge. Having read all four books — hey, I was not kidding about the masochistic tendencies — it only made sense to see the movie. I was on the fence about whether the story would play out better onscreen than it did in print; it couldn't, I figured, be any worse, right?

My words, they come back to haunt me.

On the plus side — the very, very small area that you can see off in the distance over there — it is less wordy than the book, which is definitely good when dealing with a writer of Stephenie Meyer's caliber. Some of the narration has been retained in voice-over, a technique which does not do any film good (*cough*River Queen*cough*) but which is particularly hard on the ear in this case. Most of the words, though, have been replaced with looks — smoldering, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing stares. I had prepared myself for the sheep eyes — most of the words in the books are used to describe these same looks — but oh my god, it is so much worse onscreen. Minutes tick by while nothing happens, Bella and Edward drown in each other's eyes and the air crackles with the sound of me opening a new bag of potato chips and muttering, "Fuck my life."

Even the staring wouldn't be so bad if I could understand what they were staring at — it sure ain't anyone's beautiful features. In the books, Bella's personality is nothing to write home about, but her looks are supposed to be striking enough that it makes sense that everyone falls in love with her. She doesn't think she's that pretty, but we're inside her head, so we have to take everyone else's word for it that she's lovely. In the movie, though, we're outside of Bella and getting a good look at her, and the packaging matches the contents: bland. Kristen Stewart twitches her way through the movie, stuttering and fluttering her eyelids in a way that's more Tourette's than temptress. Nothing about her seems special enough to attract Edward's attention. Edward, on the other hand, does draw the eye, in an drag-queen kind of way. Seriously, not since Valentino has a male romantic lead worn this much pancake makeup. Edward's a vampire, so obviously he has to look paler than the mortals around him, but it looks more like he was badly embalmed — and that still wouldn't explain the eyebrow overpencilling, the lipstick, and the Dragonball Z hair. The rest of the Cullens are just as bad — special mention goes to Jaspar, who has some serious wig issues — and the effect is indeed startling, though not in the way it's meant to be. In fairness, a good part of the blame probably goes not to the makeup artists, but to whoever decided to wash out the visual palette and leave nothing but cold blues and greens; the effect backfires, taking any remaining eerieness out of the scenery and the vampires' looks, and instead making everything look false and shallow.

The plot lopes along — Bella twitches, Edward smolders, some other stuff happens that gives the mopey couple a chance to run and mope at the same time. In the background, you can hear the clicking of millions of keyboards as every sentence that falls from Edward's ruby lips is added to .sig files and CafePress T-shirts. You can also hear me snoring, and occasionally whimpering in my sleep as I remember there are still three more movies to be made in this series. Kill me now, evil vamps.

Readers, you know I bend over backwards to entertain you guys — I'll watch awful movies, read terrible books, and sit through some truly godawful TV shows, just so I can write up silly reviews for your amusement. But this — this — my god, it was like a portal to Boredom opened in the middle of my living room, and I had to spend two hours fighting for my life. I made it through all four books and sat through the movie; surely you'll let me off the hook for New Moon, right? Right?!?…