‘Twilight’ vampires suck (No, they RULE) | 2 stars (No, 3 stars)

Editor’s note: We allowed our resident “Twilight” fangirl, Sharon Hoffmann, to add her comments in italics to critic Robert W. Butler’s review.

With advances in medicine, humans may soon routinely live past 100. There won’t be much point if their long lives provide no more wisdom, wit or joy than is exhibited by Edward, the century-old vampire hero of “Twilight.”

Excuse me, Bob, but were we at the same movie? Edward is enchanting!

Catherine Hardwicke’s new film is the screen adaptation of the first of Stephenie Meyer’s hugely popular novels about 17-year-old Bella, who moves to a small Washington town and falls for the mysterious Edward.

The movie isn’t bad. In fact it isn’t much of anything.

Not having read the books, I’m going to assume that their popularity lies in part with Meyer’s writing style and with the psychological depth of the characters. Neither element is evident in this film.

I thought the movie was sweet and refreshing. Maybe it’s because I’ve read all the books.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) comes to live with her divorced dad (Billy Burke), the local police chief. Going to a new school mid-semester is always a pain, but Bella’s dislocation is exaggerated by her biology lab partner.

Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is tall and milky pale, with pink lips, dark slashes of eyebrows and what appears to be a serious mascara habit. He looks like one of those junkie models from the old Calvin Klein ads.

Actually, he looks cover-boy cute, if you don’t mind the vampire complexion.

And he’s always in a standoffish, surly mood. Then again, being required to attend high school in perpetuity would make anyone brood.

You see, Edward and his family — the adopted children of a local physician and his wife — are vampires. They consider themselves “vegetarians,” meaning they feast on the blood of the abundant local wildlife rather than on humans and try to pass for normal.

But they have super strength and speed (as Bella finds out when Edward saves her from a careening car), and when exposed to sunlight their skin sparkles as though sprinkled with diamond dust. This explains their residence in the rainiest town in the continental U.S., where they might blend in. They don’t sleep and they don’t age.

Edward fights his attraction to Bella, knowing that should he ever lose control she’d become his next meal. But even after learning all this, the virginal Bella is unafraid and pursues her weirdly compelling classmate.

For a vampire film, “Twilight” is astoundingly chaste. Virtually no onscreen violence and certainly no sex — the two things that make vampire movies vampire movies.

But it’s not really a vampire movie. It’s a romance, as Stephenie Meyer intended.

Meyer’s story is based on the idea of courtly love, a spiritual attraction unsullied by sex. That makes some sense with the Bella/Edward relationship. But the other kids at the high school also reside in this Ozzie & Harriet alternative universe where swearing and underage drinking and rampaging hormones are unheard of. Maybe if they broke into song now and then, like their innocent counterparts in “High School Musical,” it wouldn’t seem so, well, blah.

That’s the big problem with “Twilight.” It’s blah.

Blah? One of the beauties of “Twilight” is it doesn’t have that typical sex and violence. That’s why moms everywhere are thrilled that their tweenage daughters love these books. “Twilight” makes abstinence HOT.


Source: kansascity.com