According to the hype, Twilight is the new tween sensation, the next Harry Potter and the movie that is creating a tourist trap out of a place named Forks, Washington, just a short ride across the water from my hometown.

Alas, I must admit right up front that I have not read the book.  In fact, until the movie was announced I hadn’t even heard of Twilight.  In case you were wondering, yes, it did take about four people to remove that rock I’d been living beneath.  Therefore, I unfortunately am unable to provide an opinion on the film as an adaptation.  I can only give my opinion of it cinematically and I must say that I wasn’t very impressed.

For anyone else who has been living under a rock, the plot of Twilight focuses on Isabella “Bella” Swan, a teenager who decides to move to Washington and live with her father when her mother remarries and begins traveling the minor league baseball circuit with her new husband.

Although she doesn’t seem to be very social, the klutzy Bella is quickly welcomed into her new school by everyone but the brooding, pale-skinned boy she can’t seem to take her eyes off.  This is Edward, a foster child of the mysterious Cullen family.  He seems determined to steer her away, but when he somehow saves her from a nasty accident, she becomes even more determined to know everything about him.

The truth is more than she could have ever imagined.  Edward is a vampire—I don’t think that was much of a secret—who has incredible speed, super strength, and can read everyone’s mind but hers.  As attracted as Bella is to Edward, he has an even deadlier attraction towards her and must use all his strength to avoid, you know, sucking her blood and whatnot.  As Edward explains it, she’s like his own personal heroin.  Unfortunately, Edward is not the only one with this killer attraction to Bella and when the not-so-nice vampire James gets a whiff, the Cullens must use all of their powers to save the new human member of their family.

The adjective that kept coming to mind while I watched this film was “awkward.”  The movie goes out of its way to show us that Bella is a bit awkward physically; she has an awkward, nothing-in-common-with-each-other relationship with her father; there’s the awkward—far from meet-cute—courtship between her and Edward; and then there’s the awkwardness I felt for the actors, who had to speak some awfully cheesy dialogue that must have sounded better on the pages of a novel than they do the giant cinema speakers.

The film’s special effects were also a bit awkward.  If not poor, they are at the very best unimpressive.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the baseball scene.  Baseball could have been this series’ Quiddich, but I’d imagine you would find more excitement in one of Bella’s stepfather’s minor league games than I did in this game between players capable of superhuman feats.  The effect used to show a character’s super-speed reminded me of the same effect used to make a young Clark Kent run fast in Superman.  It was an impressive effect in 1978, but not so much in 2008.

With 2003’s Thirteen, director Catherine Hardwicke proved to have a talent for hard-hitting independent features, but with Twilight it seems evident that she lacks that flair for the fantastic of a Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, or even a Chris Columbus. 

With all the comparisons between the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series, I couldn’t help but think back to the 2001 release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  It wasn’t the greatest movie in my opinion, but at least it was ambitious.  You could tell that the filmmakers wanted to create the best film they could and bring a whole new dimension to the Potter universe.

I didn’t feel the same with Twilight.  It felt more like a quickly (read: cheaply) produced B-movie, as if the filmmakers were just content to ride the coattails of the novel’s success.  Then again, the Potter movie series only got better as it continued, so I won’t give up completely on the prospect of a blockbuster franchise.

Besides, I must also face the fact that I am not this film’s intended audience and I’m sure Twilight will be a hit with the tweens. The preview screening echoed with high-pitched giggles and shrilling cheers, and at times I felt like I was on the outside, looking in on some kind of inside joke.

Twilight is rated PG-13 for “some violence and a scene of sensuality.”  The final showdown is somewhat bloody, but most of the violence is off-screen.  The sensuality is there, but very brief.  The movie is definitely designed to be family friendly.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Twilight.