... Twilight

So a few weeks back BestFriendSincePrep rocks up to gaming night and starts raving about the trailers he's just seen for a new werewolf movie coming out.

Neither myself nor any of the internet savvy others at the table had heard of any werewolf film debuting soon and so queried, "Do you mean Twilight the vampire film?"
"No. it was definitely a Werewolf film!" came the authoritative answer. We shrugged and figured we must have missed hearing about it.

Last night he organises for a trip to the movies and whilst lurking in the foyer deciding what to see he points to the poster for Twilight saying "That's the werewolf movie".

After sorting out the confusion, and explaining that it's based on some teen vampire romance books, he decides that we're seeing it anyway.

Sitting through the movie he was jabbing me in the ribs everytime there was a wolf on screen and giving me knowing looks.
Coming out of the cinema afterwards he pronounced it to be the "Best Werewolf movie ever!" in his usual critical style,before going on to say that he thoroughly enjoyed it.

As to my own opinion, well, having watched Buffy I'd have to say I saw many of the same themes of teenage confusion and sexuality being played out on the screen albeit slower and with less depth:

• young teen with seperated parents - check
• older vampire trying to be nice and only feed on animals - check
  
• older vampire attracted to special teen - check
• teen falls for boring aloof vampire - check
• both try to fight the wrongness of being together - check
• the importance of staying human - check

There are some twists to the traditional vampire myth that seem in a way to be to make them more palatable and, dare I say it, pretty for the tween fans - vampires in sunlight sparkle like diamonds(wtf???) and no vampire ever becomes beastly - not even pointy teethed as that would make the romantic interest less "dreamy".

I felt that there was almost no sense of romantic attraction between the main characters although I did appreciate the background montage of getting-to-know-each-other talks as a reasonable device for not having to script such a hard thing to show on screen, I just think they could have had it earlier in the relationship instead of after they were already deeply in love and ready to spend eternity together.

Overall I give it a couple of stars for looking okay but things like the nonsensical Munsters-like "have to play baseball in thunderstorms" scene snapped my belief suspenders. I can see many seeds for sequels and they are wrapping up the second one, so it must be doing something right for a lot of people.

Ooh I almost forgot. During our session we had two people walk out and a gentleman behind us was regularly letting out long suffering sighs so it may not be as general as they seem to be marketing it.

As for BestFriendSincePrep, he gives it his usual five stars and I think I'll be hard pressed to not be forced to see the sequel especially as it's titled "New Moon" which suggests the BFSP will get his werewolves after all.
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