Twilight and the first Terminator movie would actually make for a good double feature. Terminator has an action plot and a surprisingly meaty romance subplot, while Twilight flips it around (while still nakedly ripping off Terminator for the third act). Otherwise, Twilight is like an overly schmoopy fanfic that sticks around long after the drama has been resolved and the fade to black should've been cued. And it's adapted from a book! If that's what they left in, what they cut out must be pure... wait, I misquoted Simpsons.
Halfway through they're in love, and so we just get a bunch of treachy montages of them talking and hanging out set to treachy music (including one jaw-droppingly laugh-worthy scene of Edward playing the piano).
What's most shocking is that Twilight is like two movies in one. There's a cinema verite sorta movie about high school and a disaffected teenager and her divorcee dad (who I cannot stop thinking of as Sheriff Michael Biehn, even though he's not played by Michael Biehn) trying to reconnect. Then there's this vampire movie, with shockingly cheap special effects (MOTION BLUR!!!) and swooping camera angles and far too little fun for a subplot about a vampire foster family to have.
Oh, and the dude from Fastlane is the character who's built this surrogate vampire family, which is so interesting that it gets no explanation whatsoever. Man, I loved Fastlane. Speaking of my love for bad old TV shows, Alice looks so much like a young version of Ashley Scott's Helena Kyle that it becomes hilarious. And she jumps on people and breaks their necks. It's like a really weird BOPtv vampire AU.
The only scene with any real energy is the vampire baseball scene, which is the good sort of cracky, even if for some reason the future-seer isn't the one who bats (c'mon, she could oracle the pitch!). Then the bad vampires show up and the Mormons good vampires invite them to play a game of baseball. it climaxes in all the vampires hunched over, making jazz hands and hissy faces at each other like the director just shouted "Crazy!" "Cool!"
Oh, and there's a discretion pan away from their first kiss. Which just makes the underlying assumption that they had sex all the funnier. Must be way hardcore if they can't even show the kiss.
Sadly, the movie never follows through and Verheidens Stephenie Meyer's Heinlein. It kinda dips its toe in the water, like with a they-cannot-be-serious scene where Edward and Bella meet for the first time. Bella steps in front of a van, causing her hair to fly out like she's in a music video. It also causes a sheet of paper Edward is writing on to shoot up, so he has to suppress it. I am not making this up. It's the world's lowest-key erection joke!
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