Jenn Proske, Matt Lanter, Christopher N. Riggi, Ken Jeong
Man, I needed this. After enduring New Moon, the skewering the first two movies received here was undeniably justified, even it it came courtesy of perhaps the most critically-hated directors in Hollywood. I don't quite get the hate: sure, the movies are cheap, shallow and a good chunk of the jokes are painfully obvious and/or fall completely flar. But I have no problem admitting: I laughed, out loud, more than once, and got more entertainment value out of this than either of the films it parodies. It says quite a lot that, while their earlier efforts were a great deal more scattershot, this doesn't need to do much more than re-enact scenes from its inspiration. Satirical exaggeration is not really necessary, when the source material already does it for you.
The three leads certainly demonstrate a remarkable resemblance to the Twilight trio, and play it up for all the overwrought emotion they can squeeze. There's a scene in the original where Bella drops an apple; without missing a beat, Edward flips it up with his foot and catches it. Here, the apple is followed by a bowling-ball. And a baby. Which he then proceeds to juggle. It's undeniably lowest common denominator stuff, yet Friedberg and Seltzer don't care. This is what they do, and anyone coming into this expecting witty banter, or anything more than the blatant skewering of pop-culture icons, is sadly misguided: complaining when that's delivered is pointless cine-snobbery. I would certainly not pretend that this is good cinema, by any stretch or definition. However, as I said at the start, it game me exactly what I needed; some light relief after four hours of interminable, heavy-duty teen angst.
C+
[June 2011]
