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Friday, November 21, 2008
In a good ‘Twilight’ zone
Watching Twilight reminded me of seeing High School Musical 3: Senior Year about a month ago. And that’s not a bad thing.
No, these two mega-franchises don’t have a whole lot in common. There’s a lot less singing in Twilight, and Twilight spurts a lot more blood - or at least as much blood as a PG-13 rating will allow. And Twilight does have a broader fan base than HSM does.
However, the audiences of High School Musical and Twilight are both fueled largely by females swooning over the male leads, Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson, respectively. (God help my eardrums if the two of them ever make a movie together.) And, like High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Twilight is a well-crafted piece of entertainment I enjoyed even though I’m not exactly in the target audience.
Quick lowdown for all of us who are new to the phenomenon created by author Stephenie Meyer: Lonely teen Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to the Pacific Northwest, much to her chagrin. Her hormones kick into overdrive when she meets the surly, sultry and steely-eyed Edward (Pattinson), who happens to be a vampire.
Edward is far from the only one. He has a family that, like him, does not feast on humans. The same cannot be said for a creepy-looking group of rogues who do like to drink human blood. The nastiest one of the lot, James (Cam Gigandet), develops a dangerous taste for Bella.
I cannot speak to how faithful the movie is to the book, not having read it yet. As was the case with the Harry Potter series, I wanted to see how much I liked the movie before reading the book. I don’t know that I’m any more eager to read Meyer’s novels, but the movie does exactly what it sets out to do - stoke the passions of its intended viewers. For that, director Catherine Hardwicke deserves much of the credit.
It wasn’t so much Hardwicke’s visuals that intrigued me, it was her knack for working well with young actors. Her previous films, including thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, both featured strong casts, and Twilight’s best feature is its youthful players.
Since I am of the wrong orientation to be persuaded by the earthly charms of Pattinson (best known as the ill-fated Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), I can only judge his acting skills. His is not a performance of any particular depth - he broods very well, and that’s about it. Still, there’s no denying he has charisma.
Stewart impressed me more. She underplays many of her early scenes, making Bella’s passion more palpable when it kicks in. She’s an actress of impressive range. It took me a while to reconcile her appearance in Twilight with her very different performance in Panic Room, as Jodie Foster’s daughter.
I wish Hardwicke were as good with a camera as she is with actors. Her visual style is too self-consciously flashy here, with an excess of swooping cameras, fast cuts and Dutch tilts, though her action scenes were more coherent than those in Quantum of Solace. Sometimes, though, the dialogue lays it on even thicker.
I know a story about vampires is bound to be overripe, but I had to stifle a laugh when Edward tells Bella, “You’re like my own personal brand of heroin!” I’ll have to tell a girl sometime that she’s my kind of line of cocaine and see how far that gets me.
In the end, any distaste I had for Twilight had less to do with any actual flaws than the fact that vampire chick-lit isn’t my particular vial of blood. I can’t say I’m dying to see the sequels, but I’m intrigued enough to want to know what happens next - on screen.
GRADE: B
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