6 years late to the party!

Rating: 3/10 (22 February 2014)

I avoided this film for a long time. I saw the odd review and got other third person accounts of the film, but none of it prepared me for it. Even the Rifftrax, hilarious as it was, couldn't keep me from facepalming my hand through my own skull in disbelief.
There are some huge problems with this movie, not the least of which stems from the fact that I saw it just the other night and can't for the life of me remember a single scene or quote. I wasn't even drunk at the time! C'thulu knows I wish I had been, but there is no good reason for a movie with a 2 hour run time to leave so little an impact. Most people will notice right away that the soundtrack to this movie is morose and boring. This just doesn't fit at all when the movie is trying to convey tension and drama like when vampires are sprinting at poorly animated mach speeds.
That's not to say after effects are everything, though. I believe whole- heartedly that a good story can make up for a lot. I will still play Silent Hill to this day for this reason even though the original PlayStation graphics have long since been obsolete. The only problem here is that the story in this movie is much like a spastic colon unexpectedly releasing a gallon of peanuts: you might find an interesting tidbit here or there, but you're still shocked at the sheer amount of fecal matter around you. As I understand it, this is a recurring theme in the works of Stephanie Meyer. There are occasional bits of actual human emotion and drama, but they are immediately cast aside so that the 'romance' can take center stage. For instance, Charlie's (Bella's father) old friend is killed by vampires. We know they're old friends because we are told this, not because of how they act together as friends. For a minute there I thought Charlie was going to swear revenge and show some character development.
Silly me, that's not what happens at all. The movie immediately cuts to Bella and Edward staring at each other. Get used to that, by the way. There's no sacrifice on the part of either lead to make this 'romance' work, they just stare at each other scene after tedious scene. That leads me to my next point: none of the characters act like people. They're more like dolls with eerily blank expressions on their faces even when confronted with, say, vampires that want to kill them.
Well, that's about it. The film looks drab and washed out, the soundtrack follows suit, the leads are as boring as the world they inhabit and the antagonist doesn't actually antagonize anyone until well into the second act. And then everyone goes to prom. Stay tuned, insanely bored person who might be reading a review to a movie that's roughly 6 years old now. I plan to subject myself to the rest of this series just to see if my psyche can take it.
Next up: Eclipse! Or is it New Moon? Breaking Dawn Part 8? When did it stop being cool to put numbers in the title of a sequel? Iron Man did it!