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Updated Friday, December 12, 2008 9:39 am TWN, By Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun




	"You want your first crush to last" could have been the theme song for "Twilight," the movie version of Stephenie Meyer's mammoth best-seller about a high school junior... Enlarge Photo

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Twilight 暮光之城：無懼的愛

The movie wrings a modicum of suspense from the ominous presence of a rival pack of traditional murderous vampires who are eating their way closer to Forks. But this flesh-biter of a movie never turns into a nail-biter. Even when Edward puts on a show of vampire super-powers, such as super-strength and super-speed and an ability to disperse potential rapists with a potent stare, the emphasis is on swooning, not thrills.

Edward races up a mountain with Bella on his back; once over the cloud bank, exposed in the sun, he reveals his true, glittering, diamondlike skin. It's today's high-school-girl equivalent of Christopher Reeve's Superman taking to the air with Lois Lane in his arms: Edward's otherworldliness both makes the fans faint with pleasures and relieves them of any "fear of flying" in the erotic, Erica Jong sense.

Hardwicke and company put a significant amount of care into casting and costuming and the look of the film. But the core of it is oddly static -- it's all about Bella wanting Edward to give more to her than he thinks he can give. This is the "High School Musical" of vampire films, except it doesn't come through in the big numbers the way "High School Musical" does.

The final showdown between Edward and his evil counterpart, James (Cam Gigandet), proves to be a letdown, poorly staged and edited. I don't think the film ever explains a climactic moment of jeopardy for Bella's mom (the book makes clear it's part of James' dirty-trickery), but I may have nodded off for a minute.

Throughout, the background interplay of freaks and geeks ekes out a comedic counterpoint of "normal" courtship rites as well as friendship. Both the regular guys and gals and the Cullens have their share of appealing young faces. Anne Kendrick boasts a sweet, bouncy presence as Bella's cafeteria pal Jessica, and Ashley Greene is a pert knockout as a virtuous, take-charge vampire woman named Alice.

But the movie is mainly geared to putting new twists on what John Hughes comedies used to call "sucking face." It will satisfy Meyer's devotees. It may even leave neophyte teenage fans yearning to know whether Edward will ever give in to Bella and turn their Romeo and Juliet story -- in an up-with-people sort of way, of course -- into Romeo and Ghouliet.

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