Twilight

Edward Cullen appeared onscreen, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut ice, his hair more gelled than any mortal man, his skin coated in flour, and a million tween girls got wet for the first time. Make no mistake about it, Twilight is nothing if not family-friendly softcore gothic porn for tweens and lonely fat goth chicks to masturbate to for the first or five thousandth time, respectively, with the inhumanly gorgeous Edward Cullen at the center of it all, the camera drinking in his every feature in gently-lit soft focus to make America's collective vagina leak grotesque fluids onto the theater floor, the fish-scented aftermath to be mopped up all night by some unfortunate janitor.

Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington. She's a thin, attractive, husky-voiced supermodel by any standard, so of course she's lonely and unhappy, if only so that the aforementioned three-hundred pound seventeen year old girl with the Hot Topic sweatshirt and nose ring can relate to her. Then she meets the vampire clans who make nest in Forks, and specifically the impossibly dreamy Edward, who the camera devours in constant, pornographic detail. The two have an illicit, torrid love affair and he battles evil vampires to save her. That rumble you felt just now is our obese goth teenager causing a 5.6 magnitude earthquake as she swoons from the romance of it all.

These "vampires" drink blood and have super strength and speed, but other than that they happily skirt every convention of the genre. They don't need to sleep in a coffin. If garlic or silver hurt them the movie makes no mention of it. Animal blood nourishes them just as well as human. They sure as hell don't need an invitation to enter. And perhaps most outrageously, sunlight has no ill physical effects, merely making them glitter like a fucking Christmas tree. Indeed, the solitary ill effect of vampirism in the Twilight universe seems to be permanent pasty white makeup and ruby-red lipstick.

Honestly, the first two-thirds of the movie achieve a heightened kitsch value that almost makes them grotesquely entertaining, with Edward leering at Bella while she sleeps like a psychopathic stalker and it being depicted as romantic, explaining the absurd "rules" of this universe's vampires in exhausting detail, and giving an absolutely hilariously over-the-top monologue to Bella about how he can't stand to be around her because of how good her blood smells and how much he wants to eat her. The kinky sexual tension builds to fiery levels and the smell of tuna lingers strong in the theater.

Then comes the baseball scene. The fucking baseball scene.

The Cullen vampire clan brings Bella out to a field where they play "vampire baseball," and, Jesus fuck, I can't believe a human being came up with this and removing myself from my body and looking down on myself I can't believe I'm fucking typing these words because Jesus Christ, the vampires have to play baseball during thunderstorms only because they are so strong that the sound of their bats hitting the baseballs is too loud and they need thunder to mask the noise from the town! We witness an absolutely horrifying three-minute music video where the vampires hit the baseballs miles into the outfield and the basemen run with super-speed special effects straight out of the latest episode of Smallville to catch them. Mouth agape in abject horror, I couldn't believe what I was witnessing, my howls of laughter met with glares from the tween estrogen brigade.

Then some evil vampires show up and decide to make Bella their snack, and we witness a godawful fight scene that I have never seen before, unless of course you count the latest episode of Smallville again, and we're subjected to dreadful dialogue like "You're faster than the others... but not stronger!", followed by "I'm strong enough to kill you!" from Edward. I'm not making this fucking shit up, you can see it yourself at the end of the trailer.

Then, after Edward saves Bella, we follow up with a fucking prom scene, and end with Edward and Bella making out in a fucking gazebo. Bella asks Edward to bite her neck and turn her into a vampire too, he leans in like his going to do it, and then kisses her neck instead. Two dozen girls in the audience cum. Fade to credits, and I'm left in awe of what I've just seen. I honestly never heard of this Twilight saga until about two months before the movie came out, and I feel like I'm in some sort of Twilight Zone (no pun intended) alternate reality where this is actually considered to be "the next Harry Potter," but if stupid shit like Eragon can become popular, I guess anything is possible. Even so, vampire baseball, what the shitting fuck.

To be fair and give whatever credit where it is due, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson acquit themselves just fine in the leading roles, seem to be good actors, and have decent enough chemistry despite the howlingly awful dialogue they have to work with. Twilight will probably skate just clear of my bottom ten movies of 2008 thanks entirely to them. Okay, them, and the fact that this shit was fucking hilarious. They say a sequel, New Moon, may be coming as soon as this winter, and I'll be standing right there at the front of the line alongside our fat goth teenager friend, because this fucking shit is too outrageous to miss. Vampire baseball. Seriously. Kill me now, fiction can never top this.


1 Stars out of 5