Twilight

Middle-aged men like me are not the audience for “Twilight”, so why did I go see it? Well, some friends saw it and their middle school daughter loved it and wanted to know if I saw it. So friendship overcame “Twilight” wariness and I went to the second-run theater in Naperville last night to finally check out “Twilight”..

I told myself to give it an honest chance. After all, I condescended to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” the first couple of seasons it was on without seeing it, and it’s now probably my all-time favorite television show. Maybe teenagers and vampires are a good mix, I thought, settling down to “Twilight.”

Wrong again. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it sure wasn’t very good.

I can see why females, especially young girls, would take to it. There’s romance, but no sex. The ultimate bad boy is actually a pretty good guy. He has super powers, and is immortal (though being perpetually 17 years old strikes me as damnation of the worst kind). Plus, he glistens with a diamond-like dust when exposed to extreme sunlight. The clothes are to die for and they listen to cool music. (The alternative rock songs on the soundtrack, however, will badly date the film).

But boy, does it take a long time to get going. There’s lots of mournful, soulful staring in this; I think the stares take up the entire first half of the movie.

I won’t go into too many of plot specifics. Suffice to say, “Twilight” details what happens when new girl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) arrives from Arizona to live with her divorced dad in the town of Forks in the Pacific Northwest. She’s intrigued by the Cullens, a clan of brooding youngsters with perpetually pasty skin who don’t mingle with the other students. Bella and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, whose hair gives the best performance in the movie), make goo goo eyes and find destiny with each other.

Bella and Edward stare mournfully each other. A lot. Not just a little but a lot.

Eventually she figures out that he’s a vampire. In fact, all the Cullens are vampires, but good vampires. They only hunt and kill animals, and must live apart from humans as much as possible so as not to succumb to their primal urges and attack them. But not all vampires are this generous. There’s a band of hungry, nomadic vampires in the area who are snacking on the human populace. This puts the Cullens on edge. Will the Cullens have to pack up and move on, or do they take care of the bad vampires? Will Edward have to leave Bella behind?

One of Bella’s first contacts in town is an Indian boy named Jacob, and there are hints that his people are a tribe of wolf-men who enjoy an uneasy alliance with the vampires.

For a two hour movie, not a lot occurs and the pacing could have been faster. Plus, I wish director Catherine Hardwicke had given voice lessons to the cast. Her young actors talk in that odd kind of hushed whisper, which is supposed to evoke great importance and seriousness. Actors should learn they can be serious and interesting and still talk above a whisper.

A little humor would have helped too. There’s a good line about eternal matriculating in high school, but the movie’s tone is awfully moribund.

I did enjoy the photography, which showcases the beauty of the Pacific Northwest in all its forested glory. Carter Burwell’s score is pretty weak, but there’s a nicely scored sequence where Edward flies Bella to the tree tops and they survey the surrounding area. But how I wish someone like John Barry had scored this. The movie needed a rich musical score to augment the romantic nature of the story. Could you imagine the themes from something like “Somewhere in Time” (1980) or “Out of Africa” (1985) playing as Edward and Bella soar through the trees? Heck, I’d even be swooning.

I wish author Stephanie Meyer had given her character a different name than Bella. Each time her name was mentioned I flashbacked to the greatest vampire of all, Bela Lugosi, and his hypnotic performance in “Dracula” (1930), one of the greatest cultural milestones of the 20th century. Sixty and 70 years later when your vampire impersonators speak with thick Hungarian accents, or your Count Chocula breakfast cereal spokesman speaks, they’re not imitating Dracula, they’re invoking Lugosi. See that picture? Now that’s a vampire, a true lord of the undead.

The sequel, “New Moon” is ready to go into production soon for release in late 2010. I was very excited when I saw the headlines about “New Moon” as I thought some smart studio was dusting off the venerable Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II operetta for another go around. M-G-M did it twice, once in 1930 with Grace Moore and Lawrence Tibbett and again in 1940 with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Everything else is being re-made these days, why not “New Moon”?

But alas, this “New Moon” is the next entry in the “Twilight” saga. I’m assuming that with a title like that, the Indian tribe of werewolves will become major players. The movie makers, however, would be smart to incorporate songs from the operetta into the film and make it a musical. Bella and Edward can serenade “Lover Come Back to Me” to each other in the tree tops and Edward could lead the Cullen clan in a rousing rendition of “Stout Hearted Men.” That sounds good enough to check out opening night.

Rating for “Twilight”: Two stars.