No such luck. The movie is terrible. It's absolutely abysmal. It is stupifyingly bad. I withdraw my declaration that Ultraviolet was legendarily bad -- if you want to see a movie that history will forever know as the biggest let-down from a movie with a Hollywood budget, look no further than Twilight.
Admittedly, I actually had a really good time watching this movie simply because it was so hilariously bad. My friends and I talked pretty much all the way through it, and we were in stitches a good deal of the time.
Where to begin?
There are going to be spoilers here that I won't bother putting in tags. Stop reading if you don't want the movie ruined for you.
As a disclaimer, I don't actually have very high standards for movies. I consider a great deal of movies with consistent hiccups very enjoyable, and many of my friends have joked that I'd enjoy just about anything as long as there's at least a contiguous 5 minutes of entertainment somewhere in the movie. But this also means that when I think a movie is bad, it's got to be bloody awful.
The writers, editors, and anyone else who looked at and approved the script needs to be fired with extreme prejudice. Every bit of dialogue is insanely simplistic and in most cases pointless, there is zero character development, and the viewer is very hard pressed to identify a scene that actually serves much of a purpose. And I mean each of these accusations.
Dialogue between Bella and Edward is something like the following:
...looped over and over again. There is a beautiful Kodak moment that describes all of the dialogue in the movie perfectly, and that's the shot of Bella and Edward after Edward saves Bella from the five thugs and they start driving away. They're both giving their respective looks that they carry in 80%+ of the entire film and it's one huge awkward silence. My friends and I died laughing; that is the movie, right there.BELLA: (nothing at all relevant)
EDWARD: (failure to demonstrate social competence)
There is an extended awkward pause in which BELLA gives a ponderous look that is too easily confused as extreme sluttiness and EDWARD looks like he's about to vomit.
None of the characters, not even the leads, are ever given more than two dimensions. None of the dialogue is subtle and there is nothing hidden or deep in the slightest; all of it is almost insultingly blunt and direct, or otherwise it's some awkward lines that never end up meaning a thing for any of the characters or the plot.
They seriously may as well have done something like this:
And so on. It's absolutely agonizing.BELLA parks her car and enters the school.
EDWARD: "Hello, Bella. I am very awkward, and I am a vampire."
Freeze frame: the text "protagonist, and also a vampire" appears, and an arrow pointing from the text to EDWARD blinks a few times.
BELLA: "I am infatuated with you." (she turns to the camera) "I am unaware that Edward is a vampire."
EDWARD: "I am infatuated with you, too, and I am a vampire."
BELLA: "Let's be awkward together." (she turns to the camera) "I am still unaware that Edward is a vampire."
EDWARD: "I completely agree, and I am very clearly a vampire."
(EDWARD does vampirey things.)
BELLA: "Thank you for saving my life."
EDWARD: "No problem, and I am a vampire."
BELLA: (to the camera) "I am beginning to suspect that Edward is not human."
EDWARD: "I am a vampire."
BELLA: "Are you a superhero?"
EDWARD: "No, I am a vampire."
BELLA: "What are you then?"
EDWARD: "I am not the good guy; I am the bad guy." (he turns to the camera) "That was a lie. I am very much the good guy." (he turns back to Bella) "Specifically, I am a vampire."
BELLA: (to the camera) "I am beginning to suspect that Edward is a vampire."
There is no subtle hint-dropping. Everything is plain as day, and the characters must all be severely braindead not to pick up on the frequent, explicit hints being dropped.JACOB: "Hello, Bella, and I am very clearly a werewolf. Look at my wacky canines."
BELLA: "What do you have against Edward, anyway?"
JACOB: "I am a werewolf."
BELLA: "I am convinced that you are a normal human being."
JACOB: "Everyone in my tribe is a werewolf. I am in my tribe; I am also a werewolf. We are all werewolves."
BELLA: "I have no reason to believe that you are more than human."
But above all else, one of my friends and I talked a bit about how amazed we were that the movie remained consistently terrible for so long. Naturally, even many good movies have some bad parts, but in Twilight, it's a fucking marathon. You think at first that it just starts out kinda bad, but it never picks up. In fact, for the most part, it just gets worse. The first 2/3 of the movie is horribly stagnant and can be described as one extended awkward pause, and the rest is just utter failure at pretending to be an action movie.
Besides which, the actor who played Edward gave possibly the most underwhelming performance I've ever seen in a Hollywood film, barring (but still scarily close to) Hayden Christensen's miserable performance as Anakin Skywalker.
And finally, I just do not understand how a number of people can look at the pre- and post-production of this movie and say, "yep, this is at least minimally acceptable." I bet the actors were shaking their heads in shame at the premiere and despairing about how irrevocably fucked their acting careers now are.
There's just so much to say that all threads into every other issue one might have with the movie that I'm certain I'm forgetting much of what I wanted to say. But still, this was only about technicalities. Now onto the story...
Edward is 107 years old. Bella is 17. When does that suddenly become okay? Furthermore, why is Edward still an insufferable toolbag even though he's been stuck in high school for the last 90 years of his life? What ever happened to social grace, or a dominating presence? Every feature of Edward and every behaviorism he shows makes him out to be a total twat. There is extremely little that is redeeming about him as a person.
And what exactly is Bella's problem? Why does she fall head-over-heels with an anti-social, almost preternaturally awkward, whiny, mascara-wearing emo cunt? Furthermore, why does she trust him in the first place?
Imagine there's a supremely creepy dude you've only known for a month who you have never seen do or act in any way that would make you think he's a trustworthy or otherwise good person. Next, he stalks you into the woods, threatens your life, and then tells you that he's never wanted to kill someone so badly as he wants to kill you. Got that? Now why in the Nine Hells would your reaction be to put your arms around him and declare that you trust him completely? Why would you do this? Are you mental? Are you completely fucking mental? This is not a response you would expect from someone with a shred of sanity.
Besides which, he'd make a terribly inconvenient boyfriend anyway. He's always skulking and being a reclusive emo fag packet, his family is completely fucking insane and unstable, and he can't approach you without fearing that his desire to drain you like a juice box will completely overpower him. Shit, he doesn't even own a bed. He's a stalker. He's 107 years old. He hasn't ever learned to be more social in all that time on this planet, which pretty much guarantees that you've found a world-class total loser. He only ever looks like he's about to vomit. His hair style looks like he lays down in front of a cow every morning with food in his hair. He drives a Daewoo. Yes, a century-old vampire drives a fucking Daewoo.
Why can't Edward read Bella's mind? Why is that never explained? What happened to Bella's mother after the only badass vampire in the entire fucking movie gets his hands on her? Why is there an implication that there's going to be a sequel? Who in their right mind would fund a sequel to this garbage?
Remember "that fucking chihuahua movie?" That got consistently better reviews than this piece of shit. God fucking damnit. I hate everything right now. What the hell is the matter with the world? AAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.
[/spoiler][spoiler=Puzzle of the Exuberant!]
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