“Twilight”: captain’s log

If we’re afraid we’re going to fail at something, then we’ll do anything to procrastinate. I’m convinced that it’s because we simply don’t want to contemplate the idea of failure until we absolutely have to. This is a sound psychological strategy; unfortunately, when you’re dumb enough to have enrolled in med school, it’s also like emptying an ant farm down the front of your pants before the big 5K.

Bearing all of this in mind, I decided to out-smart myself by allowing myself only two choices. Choice A was to study the absurd amount of material that my school defines as “feasible.” It’s an entire mountain range of notes and text books, but I’ve actually managed to make quite a bit of headway. You see, Choice B was to watch “Twilight” [1].

Despite the fact that it looked terrible, and that it panders to bile-inducingly screechy demographics, I tried to convince myself that maybe it wasn’t really all that bad. I hadn’t seen it, after all, and it did gross a lot. Furthermore, the sequel opens soon, I think. So maybe I’d give it a look. Looking back, I clearly knew that all of the above rationale was hogwash. So maybe it wasn’t a solution, so much as a caffeine-addled attempt to spread my misery a bit more thinly and evenly.

In the spirit of what I’m pretty sure it is they do on Star Trek [2], I decided to keep a captain’s log of my journey through the film, because a) I thought it might be funny, and b) it might help whatever mental health professional I end up with put me back together again.

(1:24)“I would miss my loving, erratic, harebrained mother.” Less than 90 seconds into the movie, and the first cliché has already completely disoriented me. Hearing something this saccharine, in that whiny, teenager’s monotone, was sort of like being kicked down the stairs by Wile E. Coyote. The line was the flight of steps, and the delivery was the ACME exploding bear trap at the bottom.

(2:33) “My dad’s Charlie. He’s the chief of police.” Ooh, she calls him Charlie! I can’t help but wonder if she and her father have some issues to resolve. I want to weep a little bit when I think of all the tubs of ice cream that have died in front of this movie.

(4:04) You know, I’m not so much interested in her and her father’s strained relationship as I am in the fact that he looks like Burt Reynolds. Could I have been wrong about “Twilight” this whole time? Probably not. But imagine, if you will, a bright-eyed, finger-popping country lad with a ready smile and an easy summer laugh. He represents the innocent, perpetual hope that lives within my mighty bosom. And he’s telling me that maybe, just maybe, this movie could end up being a modern-day answer to “Cannonball Run.”

(10:35) Since November of last year, this movie has made over $367,000,000, all said and done. And one of the key plot points is that the female narrator goes to a new high school and gets stuck at the same lab table as the mysterious handsome boy with big dark eyes. I appreciate the fact that the guy, the vampire who has ostensibly been going to high school since the Prohibition era, looks horribly uncomfortable at the notion of having to sit next to a girl. It brings up a salient, scientific question: if you’re turned into a vampire as a teenager, are you doomed to suffer awkward erections for the rest of eternity?

(13:58) “I planned to confront him, and demand to know what his problem was.” You see, the vampire ran away from biology lab the moment the bell rang. I realize, at this point, that it’s going to be because he can’t resist her, even though she looks like she’s 8 and has the screen presence of an apprentice plumber.

(15:31) The protagonist slipped and fell on the pavement. Now, remember that country boy from earlier? Well, he grew up, moved to the city, and runs an illegal poodle fighting ring now. But even when shining, naïve hope has been replaced with high-falutin’, purebred carnage, I still like to think there’s a slim chance that somebody will drop a piano on her while she’s down. And then the rest of this movie will just be an ESPN Classics replay of the Ali-Frazier bout.

(15:32) F*ck.

(19:15) Whenever teenagers answer a question with “It’s complicated,” what they mean is “I’d love for you to take an interest in my underwhelming personal issues.” And I will, but I probably won’t take a single thing seriously, and my advice will invariably be “Well, sounds like you have a poltergeist. I can get ‘im for you, but it ain’t gonna be easy… and it ain’t gonna be cheap.” Then I’ll hitch up my trousers and knit my eyebrows, because I’m serious when I’m talking business.

(21:00) This entire movie works better if I pretend that he isn’t a tortured vampire, but instead is just really embarrassed that he suffers from Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome. His expressions can be interpreted either way.

(25:06) He’s just standing there, watching her sleep. It’s just about the creepiest thing a person can do that doesn’t involve wearing bike shorts and a hockey mask.

(28:51) “Why didn’t you just let the van crush me, and save yourself all this regret?” This might possibly be the whiniest sentence ever uttered by somebody that didn’t have the excuse of having a baby right that second. Also, the reasons behind the runaway van in the parking lot were never really explained. But asking this movie to explain plot points is like asking your pet kangaroo not to hop on the dining room table and take a dump. I mean, you bought a pet kangaroo, jackass.

(35:22) Why does anybody pay attention to the main character? She shows up at school, they want to put her in the newspaper. Then one of her dingbat friends asks her to prom, and she says no, right before another person nearly drives a van into her, and a vampire risks exposing himself to the world to save her. And I just don’t understand why. I’d rather find a sadistic supervillain and ask them to prom, or save them from a speeding van. I would literally invest more time and emotion on somebody that dresses in green pajamas and a lab coat, and who spends his days perfecting a machine that turns us all into hamsters than on her.

(35:49) This movie is just twist after twist! They cast the guy from “Never Back Down” as somebody hostile and shirtless. I would say he should worry about being typecast, or having a punchline for a career, but he landed a role in “Twilight”! I see bright things over the horizon for this dipsh*t.

(36:59) “Whenever the weather’s nice, the Cullens disappear.” This movie doesn’t even try. I’m surprised this girl doesn’t add “It’s almost as if they’re… allergic… to sunlight. But that’s crazy!” But is it crazy?

(39:21) The menacing music tells me that these guys surrounding the main character represent some sort of danger, but I don’t see it. They’re lightly pushing her around and asking her where she’s going, but they’re all laughing and smiling. I bet they want to play hacky sack.

(39:55) Edward ruins everything.

(42:22) “I don’t want to know what the square root of pi is.” I hate it when movies use nonsense shortcuts like this to make us think the characters are smart. I find it insulting. You can’t have your character make every last, dumb decision possible just for the sake of a plot you weren’t clever enough to construct well, and fix is all with a line about math trivia. In fact, it makes me awfully suspicious that the director doesn’t even know what “smart” means.

(43:43) When he says he can read every mind but hers, I’m clearly supposed to say that it’s because she’s a vapid human being with 0% mental activity. So now I’ve done my part, and we’re none the better for it.

(44:20) “I don’t have the strength to stay away from you anymore.” I said this to an entire leftover half of a chocolate cake the other night.

(46:21) I just realized that, at some point, the vampire has to meet her dad, Burt Reynolds. I really think it would add a lot to the movie if the dad sized the kid up for a second, and then drawled “Sure you can take out my daughter. That is, if you think you can get to L.A. before I can!” Then he jumps into his 80’s Ferrari, and cue theme music [3].

(51:49) He’s finally revealed he’s a vampire, and now he’s giving her a supersonic piggyback ride. And while I certainly can’t fault that (I’d just be speaking out of jealousy if I did), I feel I should mention that these are just about the dumbest special effects I’ve ever seen. This is literally worse than the time my pug and I attempted to reenact the dramatic end scene from “Armageddon.” …One of us played Bruce Willis, and the other Liv Tyler. I’ll let you decide who was who.

(52:20) Sunlight doesn’t kill him, it just makes him twinkle. The vampires in this movie actually goddamn sparkle. There are no words.

(55:32) “So the lion fell in love with the lamb.” Is this the sort of self-indulgent gutterfare that Stephanie Meyer fills her books with? I’ve heard the argument over and over, that even if Twilight isn’t the highest grade of literature, it’s exciting and “at least it’s getting kids to read.” Well, frankly, cooking meth gets high school dropouts interested in chemistry. Besides, I’m not so sure that reading things like this and thinking “Hey, that’s some great writing” isn’t actually worse than illiteracy. To be honest, I’m not sure it isn’t worse than leprosy.

(59:00) Step 1: Push Edward into some sunlight. Step 2: Bonk him with a hammer. Step 3: Repeat step 2. Step 4: sell the pieces on Ebay.

(1:04:41) A family of vampires is cooking Italian food for the main character. It’s supposed to be quaint, because they don’t eat Italian food, just Italian people! Or maybe, just maybe, they’re cooking a bunch of side dishes, and the moment she shows up, they’ll start marinating her. It just doesn’t make sense to me that they wouldn’t eat this girl, or at least push her off a cliff.

(1:06:08) Hold everything. Where did this guy come from? Look at those giant, guileless eyes! It’s like somebody took the mind of a nervous pigeon, and jammed it into the brain of a kid who was never going to live up to his father’s expectations anyway. Before, he’d just cry when dad mentioned maybe taking a hunting trip this fall, but now he’ll retreat to the garage and make a mess on the hood of the station wagon. This guy could save the movie:

(1:10:22) Do some people hit puberty at age 40? Stephanie Meyer had to be an overheated 13-year old mess to have written some of this. And by “this,” I mean a scene where a sparkling vampire with George Michael hair plays classical piano for a girl with no outstanding qualities whatsoever. She could have been any actress girl primate in the world. I would have been way more into this movie if at least one (maybe several) of the characters were mischievous chimps wearing funny little hats. Ooh, it plays an accordion! Does it take payment in bananas?

(1:14:53) “I like watching you sleep.” Saying these things has to be admissible evidence in court, right? It’s too creepy for the law not to be involved. SWAT teams should swing in through the windows and use tear gas and unnecessary force. Of course, that’s my answer for everything.

(1:15:02) This is possibly the funniest kiss in the history of cinema. It combines hesitancy, awkward teen fumbling, a missed stab at intensity, and – yeah, the replay confirms it – premature ejaculation.

(1:15:13) God, I miss the Pigeon Boy. I wonder what he’s doing? I bet he tore the stuffing out of a sofa in the living room to build a nest. I love that cooky little guy.

(1:20:31) Bella’s playing baseball with the entire vampire family. On the downside, the score is another fine example of why rock officially gasped it’s last in the early 2000’s. But on the upside, it’s just a matter of time till Pigeon Boy gets up to bat. I bet he doesn’t even hit the ball; he’ll just catch it and sit on it like an egg.

(1:24:04) Sharks! Jets!:

Oh, when the Jets fall in at the cornball dance, We’ll be the sweetest dressin’ gang in pants! And when the chicks dig us in our Jet black ties, They’re gonna flip, gonna flop, gonna drop like flies!

(1:31:24) I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this movie touted as something of a romance. If that’s the case, it’s a terrible one. There’s no rising action, no beginning, no evolution to their relationship whatsoever. She complains and stares at the ground a lot, he mousses his hair straight up and glares straight through her forehead – sorry, emotes through her forehead. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis had a more compelling and developed romance than this.

(1:40:25) There’s a bunch of other stuff going on, like a vampire fight, and a bonfire, and Bella got hurt, but what I just realized is that Edward is a few hundred years old, and he wants to date a callow teenager. I can practically hear some teenage girl using this movie as an argument when her mom won’t let her date some loser in his 20’s. There’s nobody I don’t hate or blame in this scenario. The idiot girl for her lack of judgment and sense, the mom for not knocking her kid out with chloroform and having her wake up in a Swedish nunnery, the 25 year old for being a pervert, and Robert Pattinson for this movie.

(1:44:36) I’m running out of clever ways to emphasize how bad this acting is. Watching the main character attempt to vomit up dialogue is like watching Dresden burn.

(1:47:22) Burt Reynolds and Pigeon Boy let me down, and that’s something I’m going to have to deal with. But the fact that the main characters finish all of this up by going to prom, well, that’s a bit much to bear. The only good thing I can say about this movie is that I finally got a hell of a lot of Pharmacology done.

[1] Just in case you’re interested, it took me a grand total of three days to make it all the way through this movie.

[2] I don’t like Star Trek, you do. Gimme your lunch and climb back into your locker, nerd.

[3] I actually had a huge moral debate with myself over this, because Burt Reynolds drove the ambulance in “Cannonball Run,” but the Ferrari makes more sense if you haven’t seen the movie. And you almost certainly haven’t.