Abercrombie & Fitch vampires

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2008)

Mind you I was FORCED to see this film, 'Twilight'. I had no desire to see teenage vampires, followed by the American female tween crowd like sports commentators on ESPN. But when I did see this much heralded film, it was worse than I had anticipated.
Anyway, basically, it's a retelling of the Romeo & Juliet story. This time Romeo is a 109-year- old-man lusting after a 17-year-old Juliet. I guess I was the only one offended that some old dude who became a vampire at 17 waits almost a century for his true love. Come on, seriously. This guy waited almost a 100 years to fall in love? Man, and I thought my dating career is a disaster.
But needless to say, I am not the audience this move was made for. I sat in on a weekday matinée and there were already enough younger girls skipping school to see this cinematic wreck.
Because I watch so many movies, I thought I would find something redeeming about this movie. The director is a woman who did the courageous movie, '13', which is a scary film for anyone who has a teenage daughter. This blows away 'Lolita' by miles in the power of a young girl's desires, like a young cobra snake, not knowing the power of its venom. With that said, the directing was malleable.
But I thought, this had to be a low budget movie - why? Because most of the scenes take place outside, in the forest. No need to pay extras for those scenes. Additionally, no need to hold back crowds as you film scenes.
But the thing that really got under my skin as a film lover is the lack of development of the screenplay. They spent so much time in the protracted, plodding relationship building between the two leads that I was wondering, where is the main conflict? There it is, in the last 10 compacted minutes of the film. Even the danger seemed manufactured. It was as if the producers thought: you know, how do we end this film? The film is based on a series of four books and this is the first one. Still, they really needed to spend more time on the conflict to make the inevitable sequels better than the initial production.
To compare, contrast it to the another vampire film based on a book, 'Interview With A Vampire', this conflict is too subtle, along with the whole notion of being a vampire. These are vampires as envisioned by Abercrombie & Fitch, afraid to bare fangs, get bloody, destroy. Apparently they have a pact with the Native American Indian werewolves to keep a peace between them. I am not making this up. Everyone is so bloody nice with great table manners that I was saying enough! Someone BE proud to be a vampire and do some damage.
Yes, I was rooting for the bad guys.
I guess to maintain an appropriate rating, no viscera was shown, as any other indication that these vampires were remotely dangerous other. The "vampire" family that is the hub of the film are SO damn nice, I was wondering if they weren't modeled after The Munsters 1960s t.v. series.
The father is the local doctor and looks so young, it would make a normal human wonder why such a young guy and wife adopt so many children who are almost the same age in appearance. They could be a traveling Manson brood, clad in J. Crew flannel apparel. And the father is a doctor, requiring him to touch people to examine him. No one ever notices this guy is cold as ice or has no heartbeat of his own?
It would be easy to slam this film but I did find the divorced mother character appealing - why? Not because she was out of the loop as a character but because she was traveling with her husband, a baseball player. Having the daughter live with her father as the mother wandered the country seemed the only original part of this story line.
This movie is for young girls waiting to meet their own "Edward", the cool misunderstood rebel obviously based on James Dean, to include the hair. But Edward is 109-years-old. He really needs to get over himself, just like me writing protracted musings about a film not made for me.
Did I tell you I was FORCED against my will to see this movie? Just needed to remind you.