Movie News: I Am Chagrined As "Twilight" Premieres + Dazzling "Variety" Review

The day has dawned. I shall run and hide from the pop culture tidal wave that is "Twilight"-mania! My movie news sources are predicting a $65 million opening weekend for this.

Oh, don't you worry: La Parisienne and I intend to go see this flaming heap of toxic waste because we are quite determined to go and mock it. We've got a raging case of "Twilight" Derangement Syndrome! We're not going TONIGHT, though. No, tonight all the real "Twilight" fanatics will be storming the cinemas to see the limp, insipid, cloying tale of self-absorbed pretty boy vampire and self-absorbed idiotic human girl. (GEEZ, I feel the sudden urge to watch Buffy and Angel.)

You know I love pop culture, but there really are parts of it that make me cringe. The entire "Twilight" phenomenon is one of them.

Anyway, I have been amusing myself by reading movie reviews of the film. The critics have been drawing blood, and I am feeling sharkishly gleeful. Try this for instance, or this one by Variety. The latter has some of the best lines yet:

But even with angsty rock songs, lurching camerawork and emo-ish voiceover at her disposal, [director Catherine] Hardwicke can’t get inside the head of her young protagonist, Isabella “Bella” Swan (Kristen Stewart); consequently, Bella’s decision to get hot and heavy with a hot-and-hungry vampire, far from seeming like an act of mad, transgressive passion, comes across as merely stupid and ill-considered.

Tee-hee! Same goes for the book too. The Variety review is a joy, and on this Friday morning, it's better than coffee and muffins for starting my day. I can't help but give you another slice of it:

. . . the chain of events laid out in Melissa Rosenberg’s screenplay -- Edward’s initial and inexplicable hostility toward Bella, his habit of rescuing her from contrived endangerment scenarios, their playfully barbed flirtation, his revelation of his identity as a self-controlled but still-lethal bloodsucker and, finally, their mutual surrender to their feelings -- proceeds with none of the inner logic necessary even for a tale of the fantastic.

HA! Since I'm evil and evil loves company, I shall leave you with this last bit:

But as helmed by Hardwicke, the actors’ early, awkward interactions feel particularly forced, and the script gives Stewart virtually nothing with which to convince the audience of her transcendent love for a guy who’d just as soon drink her blood as jump her bones.

ROFL. Ooooh, OUCH! I love it.

None of it's a surprise, though: consider the source -- the worst-written, worst-conceived book I've read in ages, the book that my elegantly literate friends love to hate. The Variety reviewer even mentions this: "Meyer’s often embarrassingly overripe prose." What an understatement!

Click on the "Twilight" tag below for more happily unfettered TDS.

UPDATE 1: Awesome takedown by the New York Times and its comment on Edward: "the poor boy has been defanged and almost entirely drained. He’s so lifeless, he might as well be dead — oops, he already is."

UPDATE 2: This review says the film has the same effect as the book, which I said was unintentionally hilarious in its badness -- HILARRIBLE, as the Kamikaze Editor says. Look at this:

"Twilight" can't fail. Even if it had scenes of naked men doing interpretive dance or sad clowns singing German opera, the screen adaptation of the hit Stephenie Meyer novel would slay the box office competition.

Sadly, the humor from "Twilight" doesn't come from interpretive dance or singing clowns.

Like a taco burp, it arises unbidden at all the wrong moments.

When Bella stumbles, as she does at least three times, it's funny. When the vampires first appear, looking anemic, unblinking, and impractically coiffed, it's funny. When Edward catches a whiff of Bella in biology, it's downright hilarious.

Hm. It sounds pretty hilarrible!

UPDATE 3: RottenTomatoes -- 44% and holding for now.

I love reading reviews for bad movies. The reviews themselves become the entertainment in verbal excoriations!

UPDATE 4: Blogfriend and gentle reader Christian Toto piles on with his humorously critical review: "Like, OMG, Vampires!"

UPDATE 5: MTV's inimitable Kurt Loder is deliciously contemptuous. FilmThreat is too. I got more entertainment of these piquant reviews than ever I did out of the book!