It Hurts So Good

A year ago, my bookclub and I read the book "Twilight". It was a fun journey back to those teenage times filled with angst and longing. This past summer, I realized there were more books in this series and following my typical attitude of "if you are going to do something, you do it all the way", I read the three additional books in the series over the course of 2 weeks. So, of course I had to go see the movie Twilight when opened in theaters this past weekend.

Doing it in style, I organized a night out for about 14 ladies that included the movie and dessert at the Melting Pot. I woke up on Friday with a tingle of excitement and anticipation of the very silly guilty pleasure that this movie would be. I came home from my morning walk to find this on my front door:

and just busted out laughing. It seems my friend Sierra had left me a little present before she went to work :) (Side note, as I ran out my door to take this picture, I was so distracted by the giggle this gave me that I totally shut the door without grabbing my keys and effectively locked myself outside and my baby inside. I had to sit there for a few minutes thinking how I would be able to explain what had happened to the manager of the building without sounding completely pathetic.)

We were scheduled for an 8pm showing and knowing we were going up against teenage girls (who are nothing if not relentless in a cause and really have a lot of free time on their hands), I got to the theaters a tad early to secure our place in line. I arrived at 6:30pm and was pleased to see that I was 3rd in line. I sat down next to the two 14 years old in front of me, and tried to tell myself that I wasn't severely out of place. Over the next 30 minutes our group trickled in and we prepared for the mad dash to the theater. With plan in place, we elbowed with the best of them, got by the ticket taker, into the theater and secured a whole row. Coats were thrown, purses laid down, but the best was Alice who just used her body to lay across and save 3 seats :)

The lights dimmed and a chorus of shrieking began from the audience. And what followed took many of us by surprise. We had come to see what was assumed to be a dramatic movie and yet we were continuously giggling and laughing for 2 hours. Funny, you ask? How could it be funny? Because it was that bad. Now lest you think I'm unrealistic, let me state that I did not have high expectations for this movie. I knew it would be cheesy. I knew it was a teenage drama. But I had no idea it could be THAT bad. In fact it was so bad, it was actually pretty awesome. It was so painful, so awkward, so just...bad that it hurt. And it hurt so good. They couldn't have made it this bad if they were trying to make it bad. It's the type of awfulness that comes from really not trying at all. My favorite review that I read was from MSN, and I think this really encapsulates a lot of what we all felt that night:

"Twilight" can't fail. Even if it had scenes of naked men doing interpretive dance or sad clowns singing German opera, the screen adaptation of the hit Stephenie Meyer novel would slay the box office competition.

Sadly, the humor from "Twilight" doesn't come from interpretive dance or singing clowns.
Like a taco burp, it arises unbidden at all the wrong moments."

Luckily, the movie was not the last stop of the night, so we headed over to Melting Pot to indulge in creamy melted chocolate as we tried to pinpoint all the causes of the movie's downfall.

Twilight is sure to be a classic. In fact I may just need to own it. After all, you always need something in your collection that is sure to make you laugh.