Trashtastic!

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2009)

This is a review of left-handed compliments. "Twilight" is a mix of the good and the bad, the amazing and the atrocious. And yet never does it get boring to watch.
I'll start with a compliment: It is faithful to the book, and satisfyingly so. Now for the left-handed aspect: The books are fun, but they are the exact opposite of good literature. They are extremely compelling, but the teenage love plot is so overblown it is ridiculous to read about. It is just as ridiculous to watch.
And yet... somehow, I can't resist it! I certainly know the females can't. Love it or hate it, every female between the ages of 14 and 21 (plus some older women, if I haven't been deceived!) knows about "Twilight." Almost every single one of them has read "Twilight." And something keeps them going to the next book, even if they hated the first. There is something about Bella and Edward's love that is so unconditional that we can't help but be attracted to it. To tell the absolute truth, their relationship seems obsessive. Did I say "seems?" I meant to say "is." It is actually really creepy. Maybe, subconsciously, that's why we find it so compelling. We know we can't have their kind of absolute devotion, yet we want it so much that we immerse ourselves in their story, no matter how fanatical their relationship becomes.
How did Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson pull off the two star-crossed leads? With hits and misses, though with more of the former than the latter. They both look gorgeous (especially Kristen Stewart!), and they both have the moodiness down pat. Occasionally they slip into patches of bad acting, but mostly when the script lets them down.
Here is another negative aspect of the movie. Melissa Rosenberg had 30 days to write the script before the writer's strike started. In consequence, it was weak in many places. She never cleaned up some of the awkward dialogue, and most of the atrociously corny lines remain. I was watching this on my college campus in a packed theater, and the house broke down with laughter at every such line, especially when Edward confesses to Bella, "You're like a drug to me. Like my own personal brand of heroine." As a sentiment of undying love, it ranks right up at the top of the Most Unromantic List along with Anakin's line from Star Wars, Episode II: "And now that I'm with you again... I'm in AGONY." Both lines reduce me to tears of laughter every time I hear them! And that, I admit, is part of the fun! There's something about love stories like these, told in such earnestness and yet bursting with such ridiculousness, that makes them irresistible to watch! See "Twilight" with a group of friends, and I promise you will never be bored, whether you are male or female!
To help it along, Star Wars, Episode II had its great special effects. "Twilight" doesn't have this. Made on a $37 million budget, the special effects look pretty damn cheap. What the movies DOES have is its art direction. I am telling you, this is the one aspect of the movie that is completely and unadulteratedly brilliant! There is no left-handedness in this compliment: the color palette in this movie is TO DIE FOR! I have never seen such lush greens, such sensuous purples and blues, such striking whites! The scene in which Bella confronts Edward about him being a vampire is a laughable one, but when they lay down in the field, her lustrous brown hair spilling around her as she stares into Edward's eyes, both of them lying supine in the rich green grass speckled with tiny blooming flowers... I just melted! I can see why the Academy avoided this movie like the plague, but if there's one award it deserved to win (yes, an actual win, not just a nomination!), it was Art Direction. It casts the mood more than anything else in the movie, and it does it flawlessly! This is likely because Catherine Hardwicke's roots come from Production Design. As a director, she is competent enough. However, she can't make the weak parts of the script any stronger, and in some parts she directs the actors rather poorly. However, she seems to have a passable grasp on teenage life. Not as insightful as her relentless teen flick "Thirteen," but still good in its own way. She builds some cues really well, which balances out the parts where she drops the ball (like with the corny dialogue and one or two of the fight scenes).
I think I've covered most everything. Suffice it to say, Twilight as a book and now as a movie is really its own brand of silliness and awesomeness. In fact, it's so much its own brand that I've invented an entirely new word for it: Trashtastic! Yes, it is junk food for the mind: cheap, bad, and completely unrealistic, but totally satisfying when taken as a break from your normal work (for me, it's college studies: I love you, Martin Luther, Emily Dickinson, and John Milton, but after so much I need a break!). Take a group of friends and have a fun time!
P.S. This movie also holds up under rewatching.