Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

I've never read one of Stephenie Meyer's novels about the tormented love affair between the human Bella and the vampire Edward, so when I speak about TWILIGHT, I am only discussing the film version and whether or not I was indoctrinated into this story to any degree of satisfaction. I want to know if screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Catherine Hardwicke (THIRTEEN; LORDS OF DOGTOWN) have constructed a compelling film for those of us who know nothing about novels or where the tale of these angst-ridden teens is headed. The truth is that Twilight is a beautiful-looking work with a pair of the most bizarre and frustrating characters you're likely to see in a film this year. I'll give the movie credit for avoiding most of the infuriating trappings of modern vampire films, but that doesn't make the resulting work all that captivating.

And let me add this right up front, if you do go see Twilight and coo and swoon over the film and try to tell me it's a great movie, I'm going to point you right at a theater in this city playing LET THE RIGHT ONE IN to give you a prime example of a truly great young vampire tale. I realize it's not fair to compare these two movies, but for all its trumped-up drama, longing gazes and breathy dialogue, TWILIGHT doesn't hold a candle to the emotional weight of the stark Swedish vampire story about a 12-year-old boy who falls in love with a same-aged vampire girl.

I should applaud the choice of Hardwicke to direct TWILIGHT. She has made a succession of films in recent years that tap into hormonally heightened teens, and this story seemed almost written for her. Bella (Kristen Stewart) is a withdrawn girl moving from her mother's home in Phoenix to her father's place in the rainy Pacific Northwest, where she spent her early years when her parents were still together. She reunites with old friends, including the Native American Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and meets a whole slew of new ones. It is at school where she first becomes acquainted with the Cullen "family," who all dress rather formal for high school, are intensely pale, and pretty much stick to themselves. Bella is paired with Edward (Robert Pattinson) as a science glass lab partner, and the two seem unnaturally drawn to each other. Much of what follows is a variation (although not that great a variation) on a high school courtship movie. The two dance around each other and their unmistakable attraction, but a series of strange incidents involving Edward popping up in the least likely places and a little investigating lead Bella to discover the truth about Edward--he's a vampire.

One of the reasons I'm guessing TWILIGHT was such a big hit among the younger female sect is that Edward and his family are "good" vampires, trained only to drink the blood of animals and resist killing humans. And what self-respecting 13-year-old girl doesn't want to hang with good vampires? But since you can't have good without bad, we eventually do meet the villains of the piece, three vampires (led by Cam Gigandet's James) who stalk and kill humans, and have moved into the area not knowing that the Cullens have laid claim to the area. We can tell they're bad vamps because they dress like they just left the club at 4am and are still ready to party.

One thing I did like about TWILIGHT is the way Hardwicke shows the balancing act that Bella lives everyday going between the human world at high school and living with her sheriff father (Billy Burke), and getting to know Edward and his family, led by Peter Pacinelli as Dr. Cullen (cool idea making the local medical examiner a vampire; that way he can cover up any suspicious deaths in the area). But as much as I tend to admire Stewart's style of acting (in such works as INTO THE WILD and this year's WHAT JUST HAPPENED?), her stammering and nervous ticks started to grate on me after a while. She brushes hair out of her face and wrings her hands so often that it's distracting I realize Bella is a fish out of water and a natural-born klutz to begin with, but I felt like Stewart was flailing and uncomfortable playing someone with zero boundaries or filters. It also seems impossible for her to finish a thought or a sentence. I imagine a screenplay loaded with ellipses (...).

And then we move on to Pattinson, who plays Edward as the vampire version of James Dean complete with gravity-defying hair, the whitest skin available in a makeup kit, and red lips that make him look more like someone you'd meet in a tranny bar than a haunted house. His eyes almost never leave Bella, which is meant to invoke some sort of sexual tension or danger, but to me it was just plain creepy. In fact, there are so many moments of mutual glaring at each other in the film's early moments that some of the young die hards were even laughing in the audience when I saw the film. Edward stammers slightly less than Stewart, but he's completely devoid of any charm or grace despite his insane good looks. One show-and-tell sequence in which Edward allows Bella to see the full extent of his physical abilities is about the closest we ever get to a traditional seduction, although a bedroom kiss in the home of the virginal Bella is one of the rare instances of on-screen chemistry between Stewart and Pattinson.

TWILIGHT is not a complete failure. Hardwicke's work in showing up this sleepy little down in Washington state almost makes it feel otherworldly. Some of Meyer's' takes on age-old vampire lore are kind of neat (direct sunlight doesn't hurt these vampires but it does make they sparkle like they have diamonds under their skin). And I'm pretty sure we never see a set of fangs in the whole movie. Once the film moves away from the romance and into a cat-and-mouse game between the good and bad vampires, the tension is strong enough to keep us entertained. But in the end, TWILIGHT is little more than a "Dark Shadows" for the high school set. It's a soap opera with a bigger budget, and a not-so-veiled plea from Meyer for abstinence before marriage. But it's a clever and well thought out gimmick that seems to drive the young girls wild, both in book and movie form. You have to respect that on some level. In a lesser director's hands, the film would have been a cataclysmic mess. In Hardwicke's capable hands, TWILIGHT is passable without being exceptional in any way.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com