Finally, a movie based entirely on a 14-year-old girl’s telephone
conversation with her first boyfriend — “But I love you more.” “I want to be with you forever.” “No, you hang up first.”
The new Twilight film
blathers on like this, sustaining the agony for what must surely be 80 percent
of the movie. Literally, the first line is, “You’re so beautiful,” and the last
one is something like, “No one has ever loved someone as much as I love you.” Yawn, yawn, yawn. I would have preferred
the 14-year-old and her phone call; it has better acting.
These groan-worthy endearments —tacky accessories on the train
wreck that is Twilight — are said
frequently by vampires Bella and Edward, now married, as they contemplate
eternity in this fifth and final movie, The
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2. The thought of eternity with these
two pouty, brooding young adults in their gothic-couture wardrobes is simply
out of the question. I struggled through 120 minutes, so surely they would lose
interest after a month or so, or until the next One Direction album comes out.
How long can two people truly just sit and stare at each other? I ask the
question but I already know the answer: in Twilight,
a lot.
See, staring is the whole plot: Bella Stares at Edward, Edward
stares at Bella, Jacob turns up and stares at everyone. Now and again someone
says some random personal joke from the Stephenie Meyer books and then the
camera does that round-robin thing where all the actors are given a chance to
stare off-screen admiring the fact that a joke was told and that a thousand
years of vampire-boredom could not rob them of the thrill of staring at a punch
line. It happens right at the beginning: werewolf Jacob is in trouble for
“imprinting” his wolf paws onto the soul of a vampire baby. Everyone stares at
him with that vapid, brain-dead look, even poor Jasper, who looks eternally
confused about the presence of his eyeballs. The whole scene ends when Bella
shouts hysterically (and hilariously), “You named my daughter after the Loch
Ness Monster!?” Cut to a shot of everyone staring. All the Twi-Hards laughed,
but all I could hear were crickets.
The real plot — not the staring — involves the half-vampire baby
of Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson). The entire conflict
is driven by a mix-up: someone saw the baby and thought it was some kind of
vampire child. But, oops, no, Bella’s baby — named Renesmee, the worst name
ever — is a little angel who ages really fast and has a creepy demonic CGI face
that sort of hovers silently over her shoulders because the special effects
team didn’t adequately lasso around the face in the computer and now it just
looks possessed and terrifying. Using Renesmee as an excuse to launch a war, a
secret vampire cult threatens Bella, Edward and the rest of the Cullen coven
with annihilation. The secret cult, also big fans of competitive staring, has
Dakota Fanning on its team, but gives her nothing to do but grunt at the camera
in irritating poses.
I know this film has its many fans, and they’ll have to forgive
me, but Twilight really is bad. Like
bad bad. It makes soap operas look respectable. Hell, it makes R. Kelly’s
“Trapped in the Closet” videos look downright literary. These characters do
things that don’t make sense and say things that have no significance to the
course of the action. And all the drama is forced and manipulative, especially
in a big snowy climax that pulls the rug from under you. It’s as if the movie
were play-acting its own importance, but never a story. Each scene seems
written for the express purpose of titillating Twilight fans no matter how much the plot or its characters are
left dangling over vague plot points (secret passports, Amazon women, super
powers) or impossibly stupid dialogue, aka most of the dialogue. And if this is
how the books were written, then shame on the studio for not elevating the film
above its drudgingly slow source material.
Some of the scenes are simply so bad they must be seen to be
believed. I especially enjoyed the opening action bit with vampire-convert
Bella running on a treadmill through a CGI forest stalking deer, a special
effect worthy of Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Later in the scene, Bella claws up a granite wall in a micro-mini so short that
the film’s editor (poor Virginia Katz) ought to send Stewart a bill for the pelvic
exam. Then there’s the head popping, and lots of it. In a big battle at the
end, a number of vampires are killed in a royal rumble with beheadings so
bloodless and sterile that pulling the heads off Barbie dolls would be more
gruesome. And someone explain to me how big the werewolves are supposed to be —
dog-sized or horse-sized — because they changed in every film, and sometimes
within each film, this one included.
This fifth Twilight entry
is a horrible movie. Admittedly, I’m not the audience for it so go figure on this
review. I may not be in Twilight’s
core demographic, but I do recognize poorly made movies when I see them. This
is one of them. Most everything about it is bad, from the clunky dialogue and
the agonizing pacing to the boring character interludes and a plot that is so
burdened by the books’ established rules that it’s getting choked to death.
Maybe you like the movie, and that’s OK with me, but at least admit to yourself
that Twilight is your guilty
pleasure.
And if you don’t agree with me now, I’m willing to bet you come
around, especially 10 or 20 years from now when, feeling nostalgic, you
re-watch all the films and then shamefully think to yourself, “What was I
thinking?!?”
