FLICKS: Total 'Eclipse' of the art (apologies to Bonnie Tyler and anyone under 40)

 It's often hard, in life, to know how to tell friends from enemies and valuable, nurturing relationships from ones that are a waste of time and effort. This problem is nothing new: it's dogged humanity since the dawn of time. Good news, though! That problem, for me at least, is now solved. For the rest of my life, when I meet a new friend-candidate I'll ask a simple question: did you like The Twilight Saga: Eclipse? If the answer is 'no', we can talk. If the answer is yes, I will have nothing further to do with you.

I feel compelled to tell you how it was that I came to see a film that is clearly targeted at the sort of 13 year-old girl who posts moody self-portraits on Facebook, but I can't without implicating other people in my own sins. Suffice to say, by the time the final credits rolled in the Royal Theatre, I was slumped down in my seat, desperately hoping that no one in the thinnish crowd would recognize me.

So why write about the experience now in a public forum? One word: penance.

Having missed the first two films in this series, I was a tad worried that I'd have a hard time getting up to speed, plot-wise. It wasn't hard. The Twilight series involves the romantic dilemmas of a high school girl who is in love with a sexy but anemic vampire (no sharp teeth! doesn't drink human blood, but chipmunk blood! refuses to have sex, let alone bite people on the neck for any reason, amorous or other!) but is also (and here is the crux of the matter) IN LOVE WITH A SEXY WEREWOLF AS WELL.

Oh, what to do?!!

And not just any werewolf--an incredibly buff one. I can sum the film up pretty well by simply noting the following: every time the Sexy Werewolf appears onscreen in his human form, he is shirtless (in all fairness, though, when he appears as a wolf, he is modestly clad in a fur coat). Again and again he would walk into a scene where all the other actors were dressed weather-appropriately...sans shirt.

Worse, you could tell that immediately prior to the director yelling 'Roll it', he'd been frantically doing curls and push ups on the set so his veins would pop nicely for the take. And even worse than that, not one of the other characters ever says to him, 'Hey, dude, where's your shirt?' or 'Put a shirt on, man, it's cold' or even 'Do you want to borrow a shirt?'. Instead, they all act as though his buff shirtlessness was the most normal thing in the world. Who knows, maybe they're just embarrassed for him...

The plot? I think there was one. Oh yes: the girl kept going back and forth, in her tortured way, between the two nice, sexy monsters who loved her. Stolen kisses, slaps on the face, thwarted couplings (okay, it's worth the price of admission to see the sight of a young man refusing to bed the reliably attractive Kristen Stewart), and much hand-wringing about WHO TO LOVE.

There was also a battle between 'bad' vampires (HINT: they don't stop at drinking the blood of rodents) and the chipmunk chompers. And there's also some sort of vampire council that sort of watches things happen. I don't know why.

Now you could argue that I'm being mean here, and that this film wasn't designed for me but as harmless teen entertainment. I suppose it all comes down to what you mean by the word 'harmless'. I've nothing against harmless fun, but it seems to me that this film is harmful non-fun. The main character, Bella (as in Lugosi??), is flat as a pancake and all the 'drama' consists of flexing and flirting.

It's superficial to a terrible degree and encourages the same sort of superficiality in its vulnerable audience. 

All in all, a terrible movie. Perhaps the worst I've paid to see since Lost in Space, over a decade ago.

If you want a  better film for your alienated teenage daughter, or if you are an alienated teenage girl yourself, please see the wonderful Ghost World; for better films about sexy vampires, please see, I don't know, Blacula...anything, really.