Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Latest Twilight Flick Fails to Break Ground

“Hey you guys, I just saw a Twilight movie and hated it because I’m not a 12-year-old girl, and also because LOL, it’s Twilight and people hate it on the Internet or something! Ready for some hackneyed vampire jokes?”

Nah, yo. First of all, I’ve declared an official moratorium on cheap one-liners about “Jersey Shore,” Justin Bieber and Twilight, the unholy trinity of played-out pop culture punching bags. Second of all,The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I wasn’t that bad.

I say that despite having basically no idea what was going on in the film. The movie assumes that anyone who would watch the fourth installment in the series — sorry, saga — has already seen the first three, and hence there is no need for any kind of background information. This is definitely a fair assumption to make, but unfortunately for me, it meant that I had no idea who the people were or how they knew each other or what all of their magical vampire terms meant. All I was able to figure out is that the way you can tell if someone is a vampire is if they have really pasty skin and bright red lips. I don’t know why they don’t just wear makeup to make themselves look like regular people. It’s probably explained in one of the first three movies.

From what I could gather, the film follows the story of 100-year-old vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his love interest, 18-year-old non-magical regular girl Twilight (Kristen Stewart). The very first shot is of their friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) ripping off his shirt. Then he turns into a wolf. From that point on, I was pretty lost. So take the spoiler alert I’m issuing right now — in effect for the rest of this article — with a grain of salt.

The first half-hour or so of the movie is Edward and Twilight’s wedding. It features a shocking amount of purposeful comedy and a shocking lack of unintentional comedy (with the notable exception of the laughably embarrassing whooshing sound vampires make when they run quickly). Twilight’s dad gets drunk at the wedding and drops half a dozen vaguely misogynistic one-liners. Remember that time my uncle showed up drunk to my tee ball game? It was kind of like that. Also, Anna Kendrick, who is edged out only by Ellen Page on my Actresses Who Ruin Movies list, provides a few attempts at laughs in her role as Dawn, an ex-lover of Edward who is pissed that he’s getting married to someone else (the wedding causes her to break down, hence the title of the film).

After the wedding, Edward and Twilight head to Brazil for their honeymoon. A few days later, Twilight realizes she’s pregnant. Then lots of other stuff happens, including a war between the wolves and the vampires for reasons that eluded me, as well as Twilight nearly dying from her pregnancy before giving birth to a baby. Jacob planned to kill the baby for some reason, but then decided not to kill it for some other equally unclear reason. Again, all of this stuff would probably have been clear if I had seen the first three movies.

“But are you ‘Team Edward’ or ‘Team Jacob?'” I don’t understand how “Team Jacob” even exists. Jacob is just kind of mean and immature. I bet Taylor Lautner is really annoying in real life. So yes, I suppose I’m “Team Edward.” If you just chuckled at the mere mention of “Team Edward,” you need to head to your local mirror during the next commercial break of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” episode that you’re no doubt watching and take a long and hard look at yourself. If any of you chuckled at “long and hard,” there’s hope yet for this nation.

Overall, the movie wasn’t that bad, and it’s much less embarrassing than some snarky people on the Internet make it out to be. I have no desire to see any of the other films in the saga, but then again I’m not in its target audience. And judging from the audibly positive reactions of the many teenage girls in the theater, its target audience was very pleased.

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