Someone should give that dreary girl a good slapping

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2009)

Every now and then a movie comes along which demands that I should spoiler it to death. Twilight is one such movie.
Bella Swan lives in Arizona with Mom and stepdad, at least until Mom decides to go on the road with stepdad, at which point Bella is packed off to Forks, a hick town in the middle of a cloud-shrouded pine forest, where dad Charlie is chief of police. Despite everybody at her new school being incredibly nice, friendly and welcoming towards her, Bella remains resolutely grumpy and sullen - in fact throughout the film the only person she is cheerful towards is the mother who went off and deserted her at the start.
I say everyone is friendly and welcoming: of course, that doesn't include Edward Sullen, sorry, Cullen - Bella is seated next to him in class, at which point he gets up and leaves the room and doesn't come back for a week. After endless we like each other, we don't like each other, you should stay away from me, I can't stay away from you, Bella finally figures out Edward's big secret, which is that he's a vampire. Edward has an even bigger secret, though, which is that Bella gives off the aroma of a particularly appetising meal for vampires, which is a particular problem if you want to be her boyfriend and not simply chow down on her.
Anyway, they embark on a relationship of sorts which cheers up the previously taciturn, intense and sombre Edward no end, although it has no discernible effect on Bella, who remains as po-faced as ever. This ever-awkward relationship reaches crisis point when Edward's vampire family (who hunt animal blood not human blood - they're good vampires, y'see) invite her to a vampire baseball game (held during a thunderstorm for reasons which the vampires think are obvious, though I failed to see them at all) which is crashed by the three visiting vampires who have been bumping off assorted locals, and who have been attracted by the aroma of yum yum Bella.
Edward's family springs into action by instantly driving Bella from Washington to Phoenix, to no avail because the sniffy hunty member of the visiting clan tracks her down no problem at all. However, that proves to be his downfall when Edward's family dismember him and burn the pieces in what would almost certainly have been the most entertaining part of the movie if only it hadn't happened off-camera.
Everybody adjourns back to Forks, Edward takes Bella to the prom, and the surviving female vampire from the we-want-to-scoff-Bella group occupies the last shot of the movie so that a sequel is lined up.
Edward is immortal - why on earth does he want to spend eternity with this miserable girl? Edward, incidentally, has the finest pair of eyebrows since Mr Spock (or possibly Noele Gordon on Crossroads), an ace aerodynamic design which are the absolute bee's knees for peering out intently from underneath.
This film is enough to give adolescent Gothic teenage romantic drama a bad name. It's badly written and the characters are badly drawn. Even the realistic elements are unrealistic. The effects are fairly minimal and OK. Just about the only bit where I feel justified in being positive is in Robert Pattinson's performance - not my cup of tea, but effective in its own way. Kristen Stewart quite possibly performed Bella as written and directed but, if so, that is her misfortune, because the character was appallingly misconceived from the start.