Twilight
4/10
It’s delightful and ridiculous, beautiful and stupid. Set in the town of Forks, Washington (and filmed in Oregon, the cheating bastards), Twilight is a love story both fantastical and utterly false. It’s a trap, made to make young women swoon and young men victims (I can hear the arguments- “Why can’t you be more like Edward Cullen?”). I both hate it and love it, and I find it hard to rate.
The rational side of me has one main problem with this movie- how can someone, a seventeen year old, no less, promise faithful and unyielding love to someone else without having spoken more than a few words? Love at first sight? No, not in reality. Not to mention the fact that she’s ready and willing to become a vampire to be with him forever. The utterly completely hopeless (or hopeful?) romantic in me swoons a bit- it’s an innocent love, barred from physical contact to prevent the vampire from eating the girl up.
The story is of a pair of teens, one a girl, one a vampire. The girl Bella hails from Phoenix and moves to Washington to give her mother a chance to run around with her new husband. Fitting in at the new places is awkwardly easy for her- in what reality does the new girl make so many friends on the first day? Yeah, right. Not that I’d know anything about that, I went to private school, but that’s another story. She sees (and swoons) over a fellow perfect-looking being- Edward Cullen, a mysterious young man belonging to a family of pale, beautiful people that no one seems to know much about. Bella and Edward are made lab partners (go figure), and awkward and unusual happenings commence.
Basically here is how the story goes- boy meets girl, boy saves girl, girl figures out boy is a vampire, and the rest is romantic history. The movie has an open ending- making room for the three sequels in the Twilight saga. The movie is full of corny moments, long and awkward pauses, lots of staring, and very few lighthearted moments. I hear talk of this movie becoming the new True Love Waits movement (true love waits for a vampire!), but it is strangely interesting to watch a young couple avoid all sexual contact. A vampire boy who cannot do more than kiss his girl for fear of tearing her apart (literally or figuratively hmm?) is utterly silly and romantic. Perhaps a good influence on promiscuous young people? We shall see.
This movie is definitely not for everyone. Not for boys, not for pragmatists, and possibly not for anyone over the age of 19. If you find yourself in the mood for a silly love story, go take yourself to this movie, and please, don’t blame your boyfriend if he doesn’t jump through your window at night to take you on treetop dates.
–Caitlin Elgin