A Man's Perspective on Twilight

Unless you've been living under a rock or in a remote Siberian village with no Hot Topic, you've probably heard of Twilight, Stephanie Meyer's young-adult novel about vampires in a small Washington town. You've probably also heard of the Catherine Hardwicke movie based on the novel. If you happen to live with or near a teenage girl, you know that this series is being lauded as the best thing to happen to teenagers since The Backstreet Boys. The Twilight fever has even caught on with a number of adult women, who endlessly debate the film and organize themselves into groups like "Team Edward."

As a man in his 30s who prefers Star Wars to The Notebook, I wondered if I would like Twilight. While I'm not a fan of romance movies, I do like a good vampire flick and have enjoyed books and movies starring everyone from Bela Lugosi to Brad Pitt as vampires. I figured it was worth the two hours I'd spend on the movie, if for no other reason than to see what all of my teenage cousins are so bothered about.

Almost immediately after the opening credits Twilight gets off to a bad start when I discover that the movie features a voice-over narration, a storytelling medium only appropriate for movies that star Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat and talk a lot about "dark and stormy nights." Twilight isn't one of those movies. Instead, the narration annoyingly tells you exactly the same thing that's being shown on the screen, adding no insight whatsoever.

As the movie opens, we meet the film's heroine Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart. Bella is preparing for a move to Washington to live with her father as her mother and new husband (who is either a minor league baseball player or the starting pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks - it's hard to tell) head out on the road. Bella appears to be unhappy about this impending move although it's difficult to tell for sure as Kristen Stewart spends the majority of the movie moping around like an emo kid who just heard The Cure concert is all sold out.

When Bella gets to her new home, a little town call Forks, Washington, she meets up with her father, Charlie Swan, played by Billy Burke. Meyer and Hardwicke spend several minutes of the movie establishing how tragically uncool Charlie is as he spends all of his screen time doing lame adult things like taking Bella out to eat, giving her a new bedroom suite, and buying her a truck. This last purchase was quite inspired, as Bella spends the rest of the movie using her truck bed to haul around her ponderous angst. At this point in the film, I would advise anyone watching to rewind and rewatch Charlie Swan's scenes several times before moving on. You will quickly come to realize that he is the only likeable character in the entire movie, and this is the only real screen time he gets.

The next day Bella starts at her new school where her average looks and stunning lack of any personality whatsoever immediately make her the most popular girl in school. The film spends the next five minutes or so showing us various high school boys trying futilely to penetrate Bella's solid shield of apathy, to no success.

Bella then enters science class, where she is placed at a lab desk next to Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson. Edward looks like a troll doll who has stolen James Dean's jacket. He immediately sees that he, Bella, and their egos will not all fit behind the lab desk and, after several minutes of pouting about it, runs away and skips school for the next three days. Rather than sending the truancy officer to his home, the school appears to not notice, nor does anyone else except Bella, who has taken Edward's whiny rudeness as a mating call and begins to stalk him.

Several days later, Edward returns to school just in time to save Bella's life from a traffic accident by stopping a truck with his hands. Despite the accident being witnessed by the entire school population, no one but Bella seems to think it odd that the pasty faced troll doll kid just Incredible Hulked a car. Bella asks Edward about this but is rebuffed by his sheer awesomeness and by the cloud of hairspray emanating from his Flock of Seagulls do.

Undeterred, Bella turns into Nancy Drew and discovers that Edward is a vampire. Upon telling him of her discovery, Edward shocks everyone by actually managing to be even more pouty and angst-riddled than before. This plot development lasts almost three minutes before the two decide they are in love and Edward makes plans to take her to meet his family.

The meeting with Edward's family, all of whom have similar Bart Simpson hairstyles as Edward, goes fairly well and Bella is relieved to learn that these are "vegetarian" vampires, those who only eat animal blood. After mooning around at each other for several scenes in Edward's room, he flies her up to the top of a mountain using some sort of Hong Kong wire-fu technology. But lest you begin to hope, as I did, that the last half of your Twilight DVD has been replaced by a much superior Legend of Drunken Master, they reach the top and resume mooning angstily at each other.

Edward then reveals what happens when vampires step into the sunlight. Rather than scream, die, turn to dust, or at least sunburn badly like every other movie vampire in the world, these vampires sparkle. Yes, I said sparkle. And I don't mean sparkle like "I just sprinkled myself with glitter" or sparkle like "I just left a Ziggy Stardust concert." I mean sparkle like "my six year old cousin attacked Elton John with a Bedazzler." While this made me laugh uncontrollably, it apparently made Bella orgasm in some way, and the movie resumes its usual mooning.

Bella goes home and later discovers Edward in her room. He admits that he sneaks into her house to "watch her sleep" sometimes. While the thought of an 118-year-old vampire watching a 17-year-old girl sleeping in her underwear had me searching the room for Chris Hansen, it apparently got Bella hot as she immediately tries to have sex with him. Edward, possibly also sensing the "To Catch a Predator" moment, refuses and broods.

From there Edward takes Bella to play baseball with his family, where they meet up with some "evil" vampires. You know they are evil because the sketchy character development they are given puts them only one step below the silent movie villain who twirls his moustache and ties women to train tracks. One of the evil vampires decides to suck Bella's blood, which causes he and Edward to brood at each other in a vaguely angry manner.

Edward decides to run away with Bella to get away from the hungry evil vampire. They go to Arizona where the hungry vampire actually follows them, passing up literally millions of blood-filled humans and at least a hundred Bloodmobiles, because he is as bored with Bella's wooden acting as we are and has decided to end the movie by force.

The whole thing then culminates in the only "action" scene in the entire vampire movie. I put "action" in quotes because it is only "action" in the same way that Spam is "food". Needless to say, Edward defeats the poor starving vampire and takes Bella to the prom, where they dance like white people and let their egos make out with each other.

Verdict: Is this the worst movie I've ever seen? Hardly. Is it the worst vampire movie I've ever seen? By a fair margin. I'd rather watch a 24-hour marathon of Dracula: Dead and Loving It before coming anywhere near Twilight again. If you aren't a teenage girl, you'll want to avoid this movie at all costs. If you are a teenage girl, go read some Ann Rice instead. You'll thank me when you're thirty.