Twilight

You would have to have lived under a rock not to have heard the fangirls screaming about Twilight for the last six months. Some people called it a Harry Potter-killer, as if the two couldn’t co-exist. What inane reasoning is that?

This movie, which is based on the best-selling novels by one Stephenie Meyer, follows Bella (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who is relocated to the small town of Forks when her mother decides to go on tour with her new boyfriend who plays professional baseball. Bella lives with her dad in Forks, and he happens to be the chief of police (or something).

At school, Bella makes some new friends, and catches the eye of the reclusive Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a pale-faced, mysterious, handsome young man. What Bella doesn’t realise at first though is that Edward (and his many “siblings”) is a vampire. Not until he saves her from an out-of-control truck threatening to kill her does she put two and two together.

There are other vampires too, who kill and feed on the local townspeople, and somehow it’s up to the Cullens to protect Bella (who has some very alluring scent, I gathered) from these vampires while trying to stop them killing everyone in town. Why they thought a town of some 3,000-people was a good hiding-place I still haven’t figured out.

Look, I know I’m not the target audience for this. I’m not expecting high art, I merely wanted to be entertained. I would even consider reading the books; I’m sure they are good.

But boy, this movie was all kinds of terrible. The acting is some of the worst I’ve seen all year, the characters are wooden, and the direction is so ham-fisted I found myself laughing several times where I was clearly not supposed to. The development of the relationship between Bella and Edward is ludicrous. His personality does a one-eighty as soon as Bella finds out who he is. He’s all Peter Parker dancing down the street, showing up in sunglasses at school.

I could go on, but why bother? This is one of the least subtle movies I have ever seen. Maybe it needed to be, in order for the tweens to get it. I don’t know. But good lord, this was ridiculous.

This movie is best avoided unless you’re a fourteen-year-old girl. Best Harry Potter, this does not. Heck, even the first Narnia movie was more entertaining.