Alright. There were two things about the viewing experience of “New Moon” that I liked. Not the film itself, but the viewing experience. First, it ended. Second, there was this great preview for a new Robert Downey, Jr. movie coming out next month. Wait. Just a second here, I need to clear something up real fast: during this review, I will not be speaking to the fans. I will instead be speaking to whomever wants to read a review about a pretty lousy movie.

Ok, I’m glad that’s out of the way. Let’s talk Twilight (alternatively, let’s not). So, what I just watched is what can be described as a stupid movie based off of a stupid novel with a stupid story that had stupid characters doing stupid things to each other to power the stupid plot. I get enough of this from the headlines, I don’t need it gumming up my movie theaters. Right, as I’m done venting my rage at having to watch this…thing, let’s start with the plot. Ho boy, the plot. So, the film begins with some poetry that would be pretentious if it wasn’t so dumb. We get a shot or two of the protagonist, Bella, running through a crowd of people wearing red (I wonder what that symbolizes). She sees some old woman who is actually her, and it turns out that the whole sequence was a dream about how she was afraid of aging. Conveniently, a good way to stay eternally young would be to become a vampire. Lucky enough, she happens to be dating one. The plot kind of peters out at this point and becomes a bunch of scenes of her crying about something or another strung together by the two male protagonists (Edward and Jacob) going shirtless.

So this is one of my biggest problems with the film. The damned shirtless scenes. Now, as a heterosexual male, perhaps I don’t understand why these happen so often. My best guess is that they brought in teenage girls that knew nothing about the franchise (good luck finding one) and had them tell the director when they started getting bored. Viola! Perfect opportunity for Robert Pattinson to take his shirt off. Or maybe I’m just crazy (I am not just crazy).

Sorry, now I’m finally getting to the actual movie. One thing that really, really bugged me was how by the end of the film, there were about four plot threads that no one cared to resolve. There’s a thread about rivalry among werewolves, and yes, there are werewolves in this. Magical manic sparkly pixies, too, but they are referred to as “vampires” for the sake of convenience. So yeah, there’s a plot thread about werewolf rivalries that didn’t go anywhere, a plot thread about werewolves in general that didn’t really go anywhere, and at least two plot threads about some vamp chick named Victoria that saw her missing from the end of the picture. Perhaps she’s some big antagonist or another who’s going to span all four films, but as a visitor to the franchise, they could have had the common courtesy to tell me what the hell was going on. It’s a mistake often made in sequels: they expect that everyone has seen the first film or two, so they don’t bother explaining subplots that arc over the course of several movies/books. So there’s that. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the plot wouldn’t exist if everyone just sat down and talked. The damned movie was pretty much powered by the refusal of anyone to talk to anyone about anything. If they did, then perhaps I could have been out of that theater a good hour and a half earlier.

What surprises me the most about the Twilight franchise is the fact that no feminist groups that I know of have called “BS” on some of the more Eighteenth Century ideals presented in the books/movies. One of the main themes seems to be that a woman is worth nothing without their man, and if any girls reading the series actually buy that, then I suggest that they stop wasting everyone’s time and get in the kitchen where they apparently feel they belong; out of the way of the more independent women who actually can contribute something more than batches of chocolate chip cookies to society. Any self respecting woman who really, actually wants to do something with their life other than becoming a homemaker (much like Stephenie Meyer. Oh, wait) would agree with me. People seem to be failing to realize that the Twilight series isn’t just a bunch of self-indulgent crap, but also Mormon propaganda. You know, those people who believed in polygamy? I rest my case.

I could go on all day about the plot and the obvious author filibuster, but next, we need to talk about the acting. In a word, it was just terrible. If I were to hang out in the back of my classrooms-wait, I already do that. Ok. If I were to actually pay attention to the conversations happening in my classrooms, I would venture a fair bet that my fellow students would convey more emotion than Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who, frankly, looks like a foot. The two of them pretty much put no effort into their performances. Now, if one of them were George C. Scott, then that would be fine, the man didn’t need to put in any effort. He was a natural. These two? Not so much. It’s like they thought “mumbling crappy dialogue” was the same as, you know, acting. Unfortunately, the acting coaches must have called in sick when the two stars were filming their scenes. So, instead of compelling acting, we get pretty much everyone in the movie staring off in to space, which is where I imagine they had cue cards off-camera.

And while I’m on dialogue, let me say a few things: there is a fine line between “romantic” and “painful.” Blame it all on my Y chromosome if you want to, but some of the things that the leads say to each other made me want to pay more attention to my popcorn and milk duds (tasty together) than the actual movie. I can probably guess that these lines were from the original book. If that be the case, then instead of taking a class on writing fiction, Stephanie Meyer most likely saw “Jerry Maguire” once and tried to create as many variations on the line “you complete me” as possible. Here, let me try it. Um...let’s see...Oh! Got one! “I am nothing without you.” See? It’s easy. And I bet it shows up at least once in the books, if not movies. People! Wake up and smell the Shakespeare; this is horrible writing! I’d expect such things from Soap Operas, not bestselling books and blockbuster movies. So there’s that.

Let me finish up by asking: when was it that vampires decayed to the point of sparkling in sunlight rather than blowing the hell up in it? I myself actually blame Ann Rice. Twilight is a symptom of a larger problem: vampires used to be menacing. They used to be unambiguously evil monsters that didn’t want wuv, they wanted blood. Your blood. And they’d be damned (see what I did there?) if you started to come on to them. They would eat you. Alive. Listen, I’m all to giving vampires a more “human” side, but there’s a line and we’ve obviously crossed it. It’s one thing to show one of them shedding a single tear as they rip apart some young belle (see what I did there again?), but it’s completely different when they act as they do in Twilight. You know, I challenge each of you to write a compelling book about vampires that shows them in a slightly sympathetic light while still having them be antagonists. Not just antagonists, but villains.

I’m not giving this a letter grade because it doesn’t deserve one. That, and I don’t give letter grades. It’s a -1 on a scale of 1-10. What does that mean? I don’t know. All I know is that this movie was so bad it caused me physical pain. At least twice during the film, I found myself unconsciously tying a noose with my shoelaces. I don’t even know how to tie a noose. That should give you an indication of how bad it is. Don’t watch it!