Sparkle, Edward, Sparkle! : Twilight, that's all there is...

I admit it, I've come late to the Twilight party.  In fact, last night, January 16th, 2010 was my very first viewing of the film, and frankly, when it was all over, I could hear Peggy Lee singing, Is That all there Is.

So what exactly was all the hullabaloo about concerning this flick anyway?  It certainly wasn't a very good film, then again it wasn't as horrible as I thought it might be.  More than anything I found it derivative and dull.

So our story begins with this young woman named Bella leaving her mother and going back to the small town where she used to live...so let's see, we sort of  have a reference to the original Dracula (or was it a homage?)  and one of the plot point to Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot within the first few minutes...

...once our heroine arrives back to Forks Washington, well, I kept thinking about another small town full of oddballs located in the Pacific Northwest...

...it does not take long for our gal to go all gaga over a pasty faced pretty boy who sits next to her in biology class ... what's not to lust after?  He's got hue shifting eyes, skin the color of unpainted drywall, and he seems to despise her the minute they meet.  If that's not perfect boyfriend material, well, I don't know what is!

So it does not look like Bella and pouty/pasty face are going to hook up, until she's almost creamed by a car...thank goodness, the scrawny guy with the great hair saved her by using  super human strength ... oh and speaking of great hair, there's this other guy hanging around, he's Native American and has the kind of locks you once only saw on The Breck Girl!

Anyway, it  turns out that Bella's object of affection is a vampire!  Oh no!  He and his family are all vampires! Oh my god!  Uh, didn't anyone notice that his father, who is a doctor, looks like he's wearing white grease paint on his face?  Florescent lights and vampire skin do not go well together...

...once the truth is revealed, Ed, the vampire boyfriend, pouts some more and whines about how he can not be with Bella...oh, a moody, brooding, conflicted vampire - that's  original, never saw a moody, brooding, conflicted vampire before, nope, never...

...I might have dozed off at this point, but somewhere along the line, Ed explains that vampires, when exposed to sunlight, sparkle!

...so of course I think about Patty Duke's line in Valley of the Dolls...

...it does not seem that Ed gets up at 5:30 in the morning to sparkle, in fact he never sleeps.  I wish I wasn't so sleepy while watching Twilight, this movie was better than Ambien!  Be that as it may, some other stuff happens, and then Ed takes Bella to play baseball with her family during a thunderstorm because, err, well, I was not sure what the point was, but they play baseball during the storm when suddenly a group of evil vampires show up.  Now, we know these guys are bad because they walk in slow motion and look like they might have just strolled out of a Rob Zombie movie (well the female does), and there's this hot looking blond vampire guy who gets a whiff of Bella and begins stalking her...

... the sight of this white trash vampire almost made Twilight bearable.  I love me some white trash vampires (see Near Dark for more on that).  Anyway, Bella tries to escape the stalker with help of the good vampires and some other stuff happens, and the white trash vampire is defeated, and in the end, she gets to go to prom with Ed.

And that's about it - oh yeah the female vampire who looked like she was in a Rob Zombie flick is still around, and the Native American guy with the long hair is also, so the producers were confident in the fact that a sequel would be eminent. 

OK, so Twilight is what it is - pablum for the tween/teen/sexually frustrated masses - good for them, I hope they enjoyed it.  As for me, once again, when all was said and done, I kept hearing Peggy Lee singing...

"Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is..."

Twilight, that's all there is...