In Defense Of Twilight

Final numbers aren’t in yet but it’s looking like The Twilight Saga: New Moon will open this weekend with $140,000,000 dollars at the North American box office. 140 million dollars makes it third on the all time box office openings to The Dark Knight and Spiderman 3.

And it sucks! Rotten Tomatoes, the website that aggregates the nation’s movie critic reviews puts New Moon at 29% positive. By comparison, the two other wide-release films this weekend, Blind Side and Precious scored  70 and 91 and neither are likely to make in their entire run what this one made in three days.

Here’s some of what the critics are saying about New Moon:

“Shallow, vapid and cheesy, proving that melancholy eternity themes can sometimes be drenched in tedium…”

“Its defects include cumbersome dialogue and ludicrous plotting – its lack of sophistication is total…”

“Vampire movies should suck but not like this. Some will want to drive a wooden stake through my heart…”

But guess what? Who cares what the critics think? They don’t matter. The Twilight franchise is bulletproof with the audience it means to serve and that’s teenage girls, whether they are chronologically still that age or not.

You could argue that even that demographic deserves a good movie with a competent script and passable acting but they don’t care. They want what they want and this is it. And that’s fine. It is not for you! Or me. Or 50 year old critic Richard Roeper and his colleagues.

Musical acts from Elvis to the Jonas Brothers, from Donny Osmond to New Kids On The Block knew the secret: But The Little Girls Understand.