Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Nine O’Clock Curfew

Twilight (2008)
directed by Catherine Hardwicke
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

On one hand, I can only cringe at Bella Swan’s mooning ineptitude over her superhero boyfriend Edward Cullen. Twilight at its worst plays like "Halloween," the Buffy episode where Buffy dresses up in a spellbound costume and believes she’s a helpless princess. When the spell is lifted, Buffy tells Angel that she wanted to be the sort of girl he used to date (18th century ladies in bustles and corsets), but Angel laughs it off; women like that, unlike dear Buffy, bored him.

Women like that don’t seem to bore Edward Cullen, although Hardwicke, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart do what they can to read between the lines and at least gift their characters with a normal, healthy teenage sex drive. That’s the other hand: a completely worthy romance full of far more yearning than I would have ever expected. Stewart and Pattinson are awfully pretty people, as attracted and attractive as even the most misguided Stephenie Meyer fan could wish for.