Where were the grups?

Rating: 4/10 (17 May 2009)

The first impression this movie left was that it was a cheap, third-rate movie, with a director and actors of the calibre one would expect at that level. Then I learned that the same director had done "The Nativity Story," which I thought a beautiful film, and that the actor playing the lead vampire had played a good part in the Harry Potter movies, where he showed at least as much of elegance and charm as that series required. And from a chance shot in a featurette on the DVD, I got a breathtaking view of the Washington forests which reminded me of how gorgeous they are. Their power never comes across in the movie; the lead vampire seems ugly and tacky; the direction, bumbling and limp. Clearly, something went wrong.
Whatever it was, it's evident from the very start. The first thing we hear is a girl's monologue about the coolness of dying, or something to that effect, and the first thing we see is...a fawn's behind. Why? Is the fawn's butt talking to us? Is the fawn a symbol of death? I guess not, because it scampers away. It doesn't like to hear stuff about death? This kind of unwitting comedy recurs throughout the movie. Everyone involved with it seems to have lost her capacity for detecting the absurd. For instance, take a look at the lead vampire's expressions when he's seized with a sudden attack of bloodlust. It looks like he has to puke. Or look at the scene where he sucks on his girlfriend to save her life and his "dad" tries to get him to stop but he can't because he likes sucking too much. This is a set-up for a "Seinfeld" scene; imagine George at the girl's throat.
As the story develops, it started to seem awfully familiar--and I realized I was watching a WB show from the 90s (for an audience who's probably too young to remember what the WB was). More specifically, I'm watching "Roswell," with vampires--and worse actors. The kids who are "different," the boy saving the girl's life and revealing his powers in doing so, the others blaming him for putting them all at risk, etc. And with the resemblance, you see how poorly developed this situation is by comparison. For instance, in "Roswell" an evil alien was committing murders that incriminated the good ones; and so in this one with a trio of evil vampires. But in "Roswell" the sheriff believed in aliens and had his suspicions of the kids already, so was ready to attribute the crimes to them. In this movie, that possibility is very remote. First the sheriff would have to believe that there are vampires, then that the kids are vampires, then that they did the crimes.... The suspense is nil.
Of course the movie also swipes from "Buffy," "Angel," and all the other good-bad vampire sagas. But in this movie the good vampires are only good, which eliminates one of the three main reasons we'd be interested in them, and also keeps them from being scary--eliminating the second reason. And finally--the third reason--they're not sexy. Partly this is because they're given unattractively pasty make-ups--and not very attractive make-ups generally--but partly it's because the actors aren't sexy to begin with. And neither is the human heroine, so that the teen lovers (which is to say, movie-teen/non-teen teens) are the most sterile, sexless pair since Frankie and Annette.
And they're hardly vampire-like. Got no fangs, don't avoid sunlight--don't believe crucifixes were ever deployed, this is an agnostic movie. And the powers the vampires do exhibit (super-speed, super-tree-climbing) seem more appropriate to super-werewolves, or super-were-monkeys.
All in all, the director appears to have lost focus on the material. But how?
Another featurette on the DVD shows the director, the writer of the "novels," and several cast members as guests at a comics convention. As each steps on stage, the audience emits a mass squeal. They do the same thing every time one of the guests opens his mouth to answer a question. An audience of little girls, by the sound of it--but in fact interviews show that several were teens or grown women, behaving like little girls.
I think the same thing happened to the film's makers. In the featurette, the director tells how she loved the books and is really excited to be bringing the characters to life on screen. The screenwriter says much the same. The author tells how she's really excited to see the characters come to life. None of them says, "Omigod!" or, "Robert is, like, so cute!" but their commentary isn't far above that level. It appears their enthusiasm for the books, and thence the movie--that is, their own work--reduced them to fans of themselves and deprived them of the capacity for mature judgment.
So "Twilight" is like a movie made by a little girl. The daddy is a big stiff stern man who loves her but doesn't show it. The mommy is a wide-eyed sap who loves her and shows it, but is silly. Also, she's not around, the little girl has to talk to her on cell phone because Mommy left (this is a movie for little girls of divorced parents). The love scenes are sexless because that's how a little girl would imagine them. The vampires aren't creepy because that would be gross. The heroine doesn't have habits like smoking or drinking because those are yucky. And she's the center of everyone's universe, everyone bends over backwards to make her happy, she doesn't have to do anything for herself--and she deserves it. The perfect little-girl fantasy.
The movie needed a grown-up in charge.