That effing movie

Twilight

Okay, look. I know that I say, sometimes, that I'm open-minded, and that I'm glad to hear everyone out, and blahbitty blah. But look: With this movie, I am a hater. H8RZ. Here's what I remember about it:

Opening scene: Shitty narration by Kristen Stewart, who is playing the outstandingly bored Isabella Swan. Yes, that is her name. Shitty narration tells us that baby Bella has to go to Pissbucket Town, Washington, to live with her father.

Things to know about the town: small population, everyone eats in a diner. Her father, who is also boring (THAT'S where she gets it) spends his time drinking knockoff PBR and brooding about fuck knows what. Bella goes to school, where she tries to be alone and aloof yet somehow attracts the biggest collection of Cool High School Kid Stereotypes. They talk like gangstas, they talk about the school paper, and they worry about prom. And they think that Bella, whose character would make a three-toed sloth look like fucking Hamlet, is the greatest shit that has ever landed in their rainy, lonely, grey town, and all the men decide to call her their "home girl" and ask her out, though her obvious superiority and beauty makes them nervous.

Oh, by the way: even though everyone talks about how Pissbucket, WA is nothing but rainfall, you don't see a single umbrella or windshield wiper in the whole movie. This in itself is a perfect metaphor for Twilight: it always looks like either the sun is going to shine through or a torrential rain is gonna fall, but in the end it's just grey. Grey. Grey.

Enter the Cullen family. These are a group of "foster children" who go to Pissbucket High. They are all pasty white, keep to themselves, don't eat, and don't ever show up to school when the sun is out.

See, they're Vampires. And no one has clued into that in the least.

All the Cullens are paired up with each other, except for one, because he makes weird faces and looks too feminine. His nom de lame is Edward. All the women want him but he denies their advances. Then he meets Bella in Bio and Barfs (almost). Bella is moderately insulted by this and vows to confront Eddy Blahzzard about it, but he doesn't show for, I dunno, like a week. Maybe two.

Meanwhile some dude gets killed by what everyone thinks is an animal, BUT since we saw it happen we know...it was a bunch of vampires! Thanks, movies!

So Edward shows up again and he and Bella spend a whole class biting their lips and gazing at each other, then he runs off for no. Reason. At. All. Then Bella plugs in her iPod and goes to her truck (why did she need the iPod if she's just gettin in her car? Did it take that long to walk from class?) but she catches sight of Edward and stares at him so fucking hard that she doesn't notice the big fucking van that comes careening around the corner of a parking lot (parking lots full of people: the perfect place to take a curve at 55), so Edward saves her and then runs off, though really if he hadn't been staring back at her maybe she could have stepped out of the way. But there's Bella for you: since she is a female protagonist, she must be helpless and completely in the hands of this passive agressive douchebag vampire.

Anyway some boring shit happens and Edward's a total dick but she's still drawn to him (cause that's how love happens; am I right, ladies?), then she and the Sweet Valley High gang go to the beach (cause they surf more than just the web! ZING!). She asks Edward to come but he doesn't show, and this oddity is explained by her Native American Buddy. You know who the Native Americans are, because they all have long hair. So anway, the Vampires don't come to the beach cause the indians don't like them.

Why don't the indians like them? Because the local tribe is descended from WOLVES.

Do you think that Stephanie Meyer ever met a Native American? I mean, aside from the weird Mormon version of them (ZING!).

So these wolf-natives (spoiler: apparently they turn out to be WEREWOLVES! OMG, so creative! Bite me.) met the Cullen clan like a hundred years ago, when the Cullens were dressed like scenesters circa 2002 (seriously), so the wolf-man-people-clan told them to piss off, which they did.

So Bella does some Detective Googling and goes to Port Notsuchashittytown to get a book on Native Legends so that she can get to the bottom of this whole whodang. (Hey Bella: he's a vampire and he's totally a dick) When she leaves the bookstore she gets almost-raped by about seven guys, and can't do anything to help herself until Eddy shows up in his silver Prius to kick some rapist ass. He takes her to dinner, they get kinda close, then on the way home find out that another dude got attacked by an "animal". Bella talks to her dad, Capt. Boring 'Stache and he, knowing that two middle-aged men who work in big abandoned shipyards have been killed, gives some pepper spray to his seventeen year old daughter for when she is in high school.

Another bout of all-night Googling for the truth, and Bella suddenly realizes: Teh Edward is a Vampire! Holy fucking jesus balls! She confronts him about that, and he agrees that yes, he is among the Undead. Or rather, the Uninteresting. In order to show her what a monsterous, disgusting, beastly being he truly is in order that she might understand his godless nature, he rips open his shirt.

Why don't vampires go out in the sunlight? Well people usually think that this is because they will burn up or turn to dust and that it will kill them. "You dummies," Says Stephanie Meyer, "It's because they are made of sparkles!"

Glitter Vampires. Be very afraid.

Edward goes on to tell Bella that he is drawn to her and vants to suck-a her blood, cause she smells crazy good. Bella thinks this is a reason to be BFFs, or at least dating. They hang out in the forest. They hang out at school. They hang out at Edward's family's house, where everyone is dating everyone, which is not in the least bit weird. They listen to what Stephanie Meyer must have found when she googled "classical music". Edward jumps around with Bella on his back, like he's a mix between a koala and a monkey.

Then one night Edward gets into Bella's room and they start makin' out. But he stops himself before he gets too into it...after all, what if he tries to kill her?

This is what I hated about the movie (and I can presume the book as well) the most. Everyone knows that vampires are sexy; after all, Dracula was just a big shiny metaphor for Victorian sexual frustration. Put that in the hands of an uber-Christian, and what do you get? A thinly veiled message of celibacy. Because if I kiss you too much, I might want to bite you (fuck you)! And that would mean death! It is bad and we should not do it. But hey, talking is great. Just chatting about, you know, Debussy and, like, not sex. Sex is bad. Can't we just be happy without it? I hope so. I'm sure we can, so long as we love each other. Without touching.

Look, I got no problem with people wanting to wait until marriage or whatever. But don't take the ultimate symbol of human lust and sexuality and make is some wimpy guy who's happy just watching you sleep. Every night. Without you knowing it.

So then the vampires have a baseball game for no apparent fucking reason. So that they could play a Muse song? So that they could show that they are strong and fast? Baseball? What's wrong with Vampire Soccer? Or Vampire Wii? Or what about Vampire Polo? Shit, I'd love that. But baseball is just a weird choice, especially when everyone, even the bad vampires (you know they're bad cause they're dour) who show up seem to agree that playing baseball will just be the best way to end a day.

But oh no! One of the bad vampires, Shirtless, gets a whiff of Bella's shampoo and decides that he wants to kill the heck out of her. Begin the dullest chase scene ever, ending in a ballet studio in Pheonix (guess what: Vampires DO have reflections oh jolly), where Bella gets bitten, Shirtless gets killed (suprisingly easily), Edward has to suck the poison out of Bella's bite and almost loses is but he holds back from drinking her blood because he is BETTER THAN THAT. Bella survives with a broken leg (what?) and they go to prom.

At prom Bella is all "hey I wanna be a vampire so's I can like get all sexy with you and never have to leave you and the way you and your wimpy family act it doesn't seem THAT bad anyway" and Edward's like "you don't want that." And Bella's like "yes Edward you are right I don't. Please make all my decisions for me."

The fucking end.



Why are so many tweenies eating this shit up like it's chocolate? It's a terrible representation of vampires (I know, there aren't that many good representations of them anyway but still). It's got Rag Doll Brainless Bella Swan as its female protagonist, hell, as its narrator, and her obsessive and controlling boyfriend who she can't do girlfriend-boyfriend things with. In a perfect world, even if this crap had been published, it wouldn't have gotten much further than an insignificant spot on the YA section in your local B&N. You know, I actually saw somewhere online someone was like "hey, if you like Twilight you should check out Dracula by Bram Stoker", and I wanted to smack them with a Moleskine notebook. Maybe you should check it out? Dude. That's like "hey, if you liked The Da Vinci Code maybe you should check out Paradise Lost.

In conclusion: I laughed my cruel little heart out at the bad acting and thin plot of Twilight, but avoid liking it or giving it any merit. In the meantime, somebody find me a decent vampire yarn.

And no, not Anne Rice or Anita Blake.