Believe it or not I went to the midnight premiere screening of The Twilight Saga: New Moon last Thursday night and had a great time! It was in celebration of my niece Kylie’s 14th birthday. She and four of her friends were allowed to play hooky from school on Friday and I, along with my sisters, took Friday off work. We had a pizza party replete with Twilight paper plates and napkins and my sister Brandi made a massive cake that looked like the one Bella gets for her 18th birthday in the film. The girls were a riot in their giddy anticipation of the film. At one point during the pizza splurge, young Kirsten, in defense of Taylor Lautner being the better choice over Rob Pattinson said, "Taylor is a wolf! You can RIDE him!" The adults in the room nearly died from laughter at this inappropriately funny sexual innuendo. Poor Kirsten, who owns her own horse and is an avid rider, meant her comment literally, not sexually. We hope.
Around 8:30pm we decided to head to Aliante Theaters to get in line early for good seats. There was already a line formed when we got there and to our horror, Aliante was ill prepared to handle 2000 Twi-hards and their answer to the chaos was to make everyone form a line along a walkway OUTSIDE the casino. You must understand that we are desert girls; we do not do well in the cold. On this particular night it was 50 degrees and windy. Wind in Las Vegas equals COLD. Two of our girls had on flip flops! Luckily my sister lives block away, so she ran home, got some appropriate footwear, extra jackets and blankets so the girls wouldn’t suffer. My friend Shanda (who is the GREATEST) also lives nearby and brought us hot cocoa!
Bombarded with complaints, the Aliante management finally moved us all into the theaters around 10:30pm. Now it was just about waiting in mounting tension and excitement for the big event. The girls did not want to be seen any longer with adults and sat in a different row from us. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to closely gage their hormonal reactions as they viewed the film. It didn’t matter that much though because there were other teenage girls all around me.
The two girls sitting right next to me were clearly on Team Jacob. And let me tell you they were NOT happy with his long haired look for the first half of the film. But once he went through his "change" and shed the long locks along with his shirt, they were giggly, squealing, OMGy messes of teenage fandom. I remember those days well and it was so palpable in the theater that it made me feel kind of squirmy myself. These are beautiful boys. It’s not that hard to understand. I was quite surprised though by how often even the devoted Twi-hards were chuckling at the cheese factor in the film. My eyes rolled more than I could count, but I will also admit that I enjoyed the movie. Taylor Lautner was excellent as Jacob, definitely putting to rest any fears that he wasn’t going to be able to handle the role. Kristen Stewart did fine with what was given to her as the brooding Bella. The Bella character is completely infuriating in the books and the movies with the way she completely loses herself when it comes to the men in her life. I just want to shake her and scream, "BE YOUR OWN PERSON BELLA! F**K THESE GUYS!!" But I guess then you’d have a completely different story or no story at all. Chris Weitz did a decent directing job with the larger scope of this film. The CGI wolves were believable and I felt the pacing was much better than Twilight. The books are all so nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, EVERYTHING HAPPENS, that it must be hard to adapt for the screen and have a compelling film throughout. The music choices were much better this time around too, not corny or obvious. And I really dug the abrupt ending.
I know that the Twilight phenomenon gets a lot of flak, but I think it’s good fun and people should lighten up. This is not masterful cinema; this is teenage heartthrob fantasy at its most cheesy. Enjoy it!
