When the mopey Becca (Proske) moves back to live with her small-town sheriff dad (Bader), she feels her life can't get any worse. Her childhood friend Jacob (Riggi) is acting rather strange, and she finds herself attracted to the sullen Edward (Lanter). As three vampires (Britt, Weber and Brobst) maraud through the landscape, Becca and Edward struggle not to consummate their relationship. And when Edward runs off to hide, Jacob makes his move. Note: Yes, this is virtually the exact plot of the first two Twilight movies.

Friedberg/Seltzer are adept at vividly recreating scenes from faddishly popular films, so the potential for satire is ripe. But besides utterly random gags, they never add anything beyond the mimicry. In other words, it's efficiently made, but it lacks even the slightest hint of cleverness or wit. And since they're only aping Twilight here, their main joke is to have aching slo-mo glances and floating slo-mo leaps that are so self-conscious that they cease to be amusing.

Along the way, there are extremely brief references to other vampire franchises, but the filmmakers don't bother to weave them in at all. There are also cheap-gag references to Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga and, erm, Alice in Wonderland. And as with their other films, they often announce who or what they're lampooning to make sure we get the joke. If this were funny, we wouldn't mind. At least there are a couple of good jokes (such as Edward's Segway), but they were all in the trailer and are badly over-egged.

With the help of efficient hair and makeup, the cast is actually rather good at evoking the dreary attitudes of the original Twilight actors. The biggest irony is that these actors actually have more charisma and energy than the real things, mainly because they're not taking it all so seriously. In that sense, this stupid, pointless movie is oddly more engaging than any of the Twilight films.

themes, language, violence, innuendo

24.Aug.10