Twilight: A Grown-Up’s Review

I’m only pointing out my age because I know the movie was not aimed at my demographic, but I went anyway. And I know I am not the only one who did so. I attended last night’s showing of “Twilight” at a half-full mega-theatre that did not contain, as I had expected, throngs of screaming teenagers. In fact, nobody screamed at all, even when Hottie McHotsie Edward walked onscreen. That’s the recession for you.

My companion (who had seen it before, on the opening weekend, along with many, many screaming girls) and I were as into it as anyone in the theatre.

In short, the movie held up quite well to the book. It managed all of the major plot points. The high point to me was the casting. Every character was in some sense as I expected them to be, which is so rare when translating book to film. The one exception was, as my friend pointed out, that Forks, the fictitious town Bella, the protagonist, moves to (and where her vampire adventures begin) would probably be a lot less interesting and diverse than it was in the film. The kids were all so hip and good-looking and self-assured.

But of course I haven’t been hanging out with teens since my days teaching, which is over 5 years ago, so I wouldn’t know; maybe teenagers today are way more hipo and good-looking and self-assured. I wouldn't know.

The casting of Bella was excellent, because although she is a slender and good-looking actual teenager, she isn’t so drop-dead gorgeous that she looks like a super model. I’ve seen photos of her at premieres and she cleans up real nice, and way swankier, but they were wise to tone it down for the movie. Bella is supposed to be relatively ordinary, at least to the casual observer.

And Edward managed to be both gorgeous and scary. This is not an easy feat. The fact that Robert Pattinson, the actor who plays Edward, had only been seen on the big screen briefly in the Harry Potter franchise as Cedric Diggory made it easy to feel he was a fresh face. It wasn’t like, “Oh look, there’s Daniel Radlciffe/Harry Potter pretending to Edward.” That would never have worked, in spite of Radcliffe’s chops and washboard abs he displayed to much delight in his stage work on “Equus.”

The one thing the movie did not quite grab was actually the most appealing part of the book: the low-level erotic tension that pervades every encounter between Bella and Edward. They certainly had sexual chemistry in the movie; my friend commented that “you could fry an egg” on the one scene where they kiss. And Stephanie Meyer, the author of the series of four vampire books, is a master at understatement and high goth romance. It’s innocent on the surface, but underneath it’s going at a slow burn.

It’s all in the longing. And there’s a lot of longing in the book, which just doesn’t translate to the screen. Unless Bella was doing a LOT more voiceovers, (which I didn’t care for, but I see as necessary) we wouldn’t be able to get into the hardcore pining she does in the book(s). And this yearning combined with the brief encounters and downright electric contact that they have in the book was so much diminished on screen.

But that’s the problem with film; it’s visual, and is no competition for the fabulous fantasies we can create in our own heads. They did have great chemistry, and there was passion. But when I read the book, it seemed like there was more physical contact (but not much) and a lot more of that bubbly tension.

So that is my only complaint in an otherwise faithful and marvelously cast film. And I just finished the fourth and final book the other day, and I’m feeling a bit wistful. It’s fun to find somewhere to throw yourself and your imagination for a time, especially when it’s so different from your everyday life. I don’t want to go and read her book “for grown-ups” because I’m afraid I’ll just compare it to “Twilight.” Maybe when I grow out of this phase, I’ll give it a look, but for now I’m enjoying a renewed adolescence instead.