Twilight (2008, USA)

Admittedly, I have read all four of the Twilight books. They’re like book crack – terrible, but hard to quit once you’ve gotten started. In a perfect world, the movie version of the first book would either be entirely forgotten in the space of a few weeks, or destined for midnight screenings along the lines of Rocky Horror. It’s terrible. All of the weirdness of the book – why is Edward such a patronizing dick, questioning everything that Bella says or does? And what’s with the obscene stalking? Or the complete lack of vampire-lore rules? – is multiplied tenfold by Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart’s complete lack of chemistry. Without any real sense of a growing connection between the two actors, the whole thing becomes a hilarious charade, a paint-by-numbers adaptation of a book that doesn’t have a whole lot of plot strength or acceptable dialog to begin with. Seriously, I’d love to see someone take Twilight to the next level – can’t you just see the baseball game enacted by audience members throughout the theater, or catcalls during Edward and Bella’s terribly contrived and uncomfortable “conversations”? Comedy gold.

On a related note, I know that New Moon and Eclipse are being filmed back-to-back, but I cannot imagine how anyone will be able to film Breaking Dawn. First off, it’s about 800 pages long. Then there’s the teenage (marital!) sex, the most horrifying pregnancy I’ve seen committed to paper, and the entirely bizarre and happy-making second half of the book. On one hand, I don’t know how a studio would be able to pass up such an obvious cash cow, but on the other hand – I know from unfilmable, and Breaking Dawn is totally unfilmable. Unless, as my friends and I discussed, John Waters were to attempt it. Or maybe David Lynch.