SPOILER ALERT- Twilight; Not Twilight But honestly, if you haven't seen Twilight, were you planning to? "Not Twilight" is exactly and purely what it promises to be-- not "Twilight." It unapologetically, but not unaffectionately, manages to extract the essence of the film in six minutes, and make good-natured fun of pretty much every element of the movies.
Twilight superfans will either love or hate it, as is true of any satire.
Viewers who haven't seen the original will probably still enjoy it. It's difficult to tell. I have a hard time conceptualizing how anyone with a television, internet access, or a tendency to visit the theater at least once a year could have missed the Twilight trailer.
Really, that's all you need to have seen to appreciate most of what the production team has done.
The smartest move the writers made was to choose the scene that was clipped and repeated for trailers and teen award shows and broadcast ad nauseum. This is the appropriate length for a film of this type. Any longer and the jokes begin to skip like a broken record. Not Twilight manages to avoid this.
One criticism is that it may err on the side of overly silly at times. The key to hitting satire square on the head is to play absurdity with a dead serious poker face.
Not Twilight nails this with the color wash and with Mary Kate Shellhardt's performance, who bears a striking resemblance to Kristen Stewart-as-Bella, if we assume that Bella is as timeless as a vampire. She pulls off that much adored combination of teen angst, hopelessness, and blank vacancy that makes one wonder whether Stewart has brilliantly captured the essence of tortured youth, can't act her way out of a hat, or has been bitten by a zombie. In any case, Shellhardt's decision to play a vintage Stewart Bella is one of the primary reasons Not Twilight works so well- it doesn't take the original and run wildly in a separate direction, it retains certain elements so close to the original that it highlights the absurdities embedded in the original.
The script accomplishes this very well for the most part. It picks and chooses the moments most ripe for mockery, like the most seasoned high school bully. In one particular string of dialogue that barely strays from the original, Dennis Hemphill Jr. (principal writer and the actor who portrays Edward) takes what should by all standards of literary decency be a comedic monologue fit awkwardly into a dramatic scene in the original Twilight movie, and plays it literally. I happened to read the Twilight script before seeing the movie, and the Not Twilight version was dead on what I'd pictured in my mind. (The "as if" sequence) His performance amplifies the absurdity, and in most scenes this works well. At times, as I briefly mentioned, the element of the absurd seems to stray away from the story just long enough to push the audience back to arm's length. The dance breakdown is one of these moments.
Hemphill's performance is solid and strong for the most part. He has chosen a completely different direction from Shellhardt, shunning any pretense of mimicking Robert Pattinson (although the hair and makeup is pretty great) and recreating the character entirely. This works purely for the reason that the two stand out so starkly as foils for one another. A silly Bella AND Edward would have weakened Not Twilight greatly. As the actors played it, they each strengthened the other's performance.
Visually, Not Twilight does a great job.
One final criticism: the ending is a departure from the rest of the movie both in tone and in that it is virtually the only portion that does not directly parody Twilight. It's a bit abrupt and leaves a slight sense of having been cheated. Then again, how to end a six minute parody of a 109-page movie isn't an easy task.
And Spielberg took 2 1/2 hours to end his delightful short, A.I.
Twilight superfans will either love or hate it, as is true of any satire.
Viewers who haven't seen the original will probably still enjoy it. It's difficult to tell. I have a hard time conceptualizing how anyone with a television, internet access, or a tendency to visit the theater at least once a year could have missed the Twilight trailer.
Really, that's all you need to have seen to appreciate most of what the production team has done.
The smartest move the writers made was to choose the scene that was clipped and repeated for trailers and teen award shows and broadcast ad nauseum. This is the appropriate length for a film of this type. Any longer and the jokes begin to skip like a broken record. Not Twilight manages to avoid this.
One criticism is that it may err on the side of overly silly at times. The key to hitting satire square on the head is to play absurdity with a dead serious poker face.
Not Twilight nails this with the color wash and with Mary Kate Shellhardt's performance, who bears a striking resemblance to Kristen Stewart-as-Bella, if we assume that Bella is as timeless as a vampire. She pulls off that much adored combination of teen angst, hopelessness, and blank vacancy that makes one wonder whether Stewart has brilliantly captured the essence of tortured youth, can't act her way out of a hat, or has been bitten by a zombie. In any case, Shellhardt's decision to play a vintage Stewart Bella is one of the primary reasons Not Twilight works so well- it doesn't take the original and run wildly in a separate direction, it retains certain elements so close to the original that it highlights the absurdities embedded in the original.
The script accomplishes this very well for the most part. It picks and chooses the moments most ripe for mockery, like the most seasoned high school bully. In one particular string of dialogue that barely strays from the original, Dennis Hemphill Jr. (principal writer and the actor who portrays Edward) takes what should by all standards of literary decency be a comedic monologue fit awkwardly into a dramatic scene in the original Twilight movie, and plays it literally. I happened to read the Twilight script before seeing the movie, and the Not Twilight version was dead on what I'd pictured in my mind. (The "as if" sequence) His performance amplifies the absurdity, and in most scenes this works well. At times, as I briefly mentioned, the element of the absurd seems to stray away from the story just long enough to push the audience back to arm's length. The dance breakdown is one of these moments.
Hemphill's performance is solid and strong for the most part. He has chosen a completely different direction from Shellhardt, shunning any pretense of mimicking Robert Pattinson (although the hair and makeup is pretty great) and recreating the character entirely. This works purely for the reason that the two stand out so starkly as foils for one another. A silly Bella AND Edward would have weakened Not Twilight greatly. As the actors played it, they each strengthened the other's performance.
Visually, Not Twilight does a great job.
One final criticism: the ending is a departure from the rest of the movie both in tone and in that it is virtually the only portion that does not directly parody Twilight. It's a bit abrupt and leaves a slight sense of having been cheated. Then again, how to end a six minute parody of a 109-page movie isn't an easy task.
And Spielberg took 2 1/2 hours to end his delightful short, A.I.