Twilight

I'm the first to admit that I'm not the target audience for Twilight, and as I sat in a theater surrounded by teenage girls, it was even more apparent. I haven't read the books by Stephenie Meyer that have been such a sensation, and I don't festoon my bedroom walls with pictures of hunky Byronic actors. That being said, it isn't impossible to take a property that has a narrow demographic and make a film that transcends the fan-base appeal and is enjoyable for all audiences, such as some of the Harry Potter films or the better comic-book adaptations. Twilight does not do that.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who specializes in films about teens (Thirteen and The Lords of Dogtown) has made a film that would appear to be faithful to the source material (judging by the plot summary of the book that I read on Wikipedia) and pleased the audience I saw it with (it's not often a gaggle of teenage girls will sit in the theater through the credits). To the discerning cineaste, though, the response should be a stifled yawn.

This is, if you have been living in a cave, a movie about vampires. Movies about vampires are always really about something else. Lately they've been metaphors about outcasts in society, whether they are Jews or gays or some other misunderstood group. Meyer has gone back to the metaphor used by Bram Stoker in the seminal vampire story, Dracula--the bite of a vampire as metaphor for sexual initiation.

The heroine of the tale is Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart. She is a brooding loner who moves from sunny Phoenix to overcast Washington State to live with her distant father. She makes friends at her new high school, but is intrigued by a quintet of weird students, the Cullens, who are all foster children of the town's doctor (why a family of vampires wouldn't take advantage of home-schooling isn't revealed, other than that it would stop the plot dead in its tracks). One of these kids, Edward, is another pale and brooding figure, and Bella is intrigued, even though he is initially rude to her. Turns out he is also attracted, but for slightly different reasons--Bella makes him hungry.

Instead of the eternal dance of young people deciding on whether to consummate their love, Bella and Edward dicker about whether he should make her a vampire or not. These kids don't seem interested in anybody parts below the waste, it's all about fangs and throats.

The Cullens are good vampires--they don't attack humans, and instead feast on the blood of woodland creatures (which would only anger PETA). Edward overcomes his bloodlust and he and Bella begin dating, and she is welcomed into their family. This leads to one of the most ludicrous scenes I've come across in recent memory--the Cullens playing a game of pickup baseball, vampire style. But then they encounter the bad vampires, who have no problem killing humans, and Bella is endangered. Will she be rescued by Edward? Well, there are three more books in the series.

None of this is interesting to anyone who isn't female and under sixteen. When Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, makes his initial appearance, the crowd of girls I was with audibly gasped, so in some way his casting was successful. But he and Stewart, who is appropriately pale and ethereal for a girl who would fall for a vampire, don't really act as much as strike attitudes. Stewart, in particular, is pretty bad, but I'm wondering if she wasn't a prisoner to the character and the material. All she does is act sullen, rarely changing facial expression and reciting her lines in a monotone. No one in the cast does much better. The Cullen father, Peter Facinelli, is saddled with a bizarre hair and makeup job.

I'm sure the rest of the books will be filmed, as this one ends with a teaser as to what will happen next. I probably won't be back.