TWILIGHT (2008) **1/2 More adults playing teenage angst games. Why, oh why, must they do it? Did they not hear David Bowie explain "we're quite aware what we're going through," or are they still so struck and taken in by it that they're determined to shout the same thing, albeit at far greater length and substantially lower aesthetic wattage? Whatever. It's all written with this sense of the teenage clichés-that do in fact rule that world to a substantial extent, kind of like laws-but without the raw emotional flourishes that point to anything beyond the superficiality of it. Cool kids and geeks glued onto a vampire world painted after they'd run out of a bunch of colors (metaphorically: I'm not commenting here on Catherine Hardwicke's visuals, which are excellent). For a long time-nearly half the film at least-it's more laughable than anything else. You feel sorry for the writer, and resentful on behalf of the actors. Robert Pattinson is set up as this "C-minus nondescript high school girl's dream": mysterious, powerful, protective, oh how he battles himself against his overwhelming emotions regarding her. It's damn near Victorian in its patheticness and absurdity. But as the film goes on, and it all settles in and moves beyond that to some extent, I admit you I did see small (I mean very small ) elements of James Dean in the performance, and Marlon Brando, and Christopher Walken. Actually, I think it was more in the makeup and learned mannerisms than the performance, but there is a gradual awareness that at least something is there, that isn't unintentionally funny. Anyway, the chicks dig it. It's all that Harry Potter-level literature portrayed on the screen in a manner calculated not to accidentally endow it with some depth that the enthusiados might miss out on (but broadly enough stroked metaphors that they can at least dream about it all--out there somewhere. Are you talking about deeper than love, mate? Who's deluding themselves ), but it does eventually get kind of fun (the baseball game is so inappropriate and out of place: and very funny), and the music is nice. It's a much easier role, but Billy Burke is absolutely perfect as the dad. I've hung out in that part of the world, I know Port Angeles, that guy's all over the damn place. And he is, too, incidentally, absolutely ready for vampires...although he characterizes it more as jack-booted NATO troops falling from black helicopters. Ashley Greene is great as the aloof, auto-bitchy cool girl, but her performance loses impact in direct proportion to their efforts to expand the character. They shoulda kept her haughty, and quiet.
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