“Twilight”
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson
Released: Nov. 21, 2008

WATCH THE TRAILER

An unexpectedly hilarious adaptation that might be better than the book and will entertain you no matter how you feel about the series.

COULDN'T SLEEP ON Thursday night?

Neither could anyone else, since at 12:01 on Thursday night/Friday morning, "Twilight" opened in theaters everywhere, and it was big.

It's been screamed over and at till ears are bleeding, and it's infiltrated the dreams of millions of young girls (and guys, sometimes) and adorned T-shirts and Facebook flair boards and fronts of magazines and newspapers.

The books and their fans have been made fun of endlessly by peers and celebrities alike. The world has been overrun by vampires, werewolves, and the one human girl who has brought them together.

At 12:01 on Thursday night/Friday morning, I was sitting there, in a theater packed full, watching the "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" trailer, crying over the movie that I wasn't watching.

Then, I spent the next two hours pretty much laughing harder than I have laughed in a very long time.

Every "Twilight" trailer I have seen has advertised a serious, beautiful romance between an average girl and a hot, mysterious guy, with random shots of deer and trees interspersed to make it look like an artsy fantasy or something.

In my naiveté, I had decided that it was entirely possible for Catherine Hardwicke, a director I had never heard of, to actually make a good movie out of a so-so book.

I'm not sure if "Twilight" was good, per se, as in "good quality," but it was definitely extremely enjoyable. It was one of the funniest movies I have seen all year, which is quite impressive, especially for it not being a comedy.

The movie, in short, tells the tale of how Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), an apparently average, clumsy, boring, uninteresting, stoic, and unhappy 17-year-old girl, goes nuts and falls in love with an unbelievably, inhumanly attractive and mysterious 17-year-old boy/107-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and then she almost gets eaten by another evil vampire, and it is frightening for a while but not really since (SPOILERISH!) you know she survives for three more books.

But who really cares about the plot? I mean, for the first hour and a half of the movie, you can’t even tell it has one. It seems that the film is just an excuse for everyone to make totally ridiculous facial expressions.

Jasper Cullen (Jackson Rathbone), Edward's adopted brother/brother-in-law, is officially my favorite character in the movie. I don't think he actually had any lines, but every time he was on the screen, his face was so silly looking that the entire audience cracked up. He looked like he was constipated. And he was angry about it.

When Bella walks into the biology classroom for the first time, she walks in front of a fan, sending her incredibly alluring scent straight at Edward, her soon-to-be lab partner. He also looks as if he’s constipated, but he's not really angry. He's surprised about it. And mildly confused. Like: "Oh! This is uncomfortable! And also it doesn't make sense, since I don't eat real food!"

There are so many hilariously priceless facial expressions in this movie that I wish I could describe, but I just can't. Justice cannot be done with words. Pictures, maybe, but I can't find any good stills and there are already far too many embarrassing pictures of me on the Internet.

The faces weren't the only great thing about the movie. I also loved the effects.

There's one part in the book where Edward tells Bella that instead of burning in sunlight like vampires are supposed to do, he sparkles. Like diamonds. Like thousands of tiny diamonds all over his body. Like his skin is composed of tiny diamonds. This, in my head, looks super awesome. However, in the movie, not so much.

It just looks like he's sweaty. Really sweaty. Like he just ran two marathons, through a desert. And his sweat is glistening, kind of. But Bella still reacts as if she is seeing the amazing diamond-man that is in my head. If I were her, I would be saying: "Put your shirt back on, stupid. You're all gross and sweaty, plus you did not get a six pack and remove all your chest hair like the filmmakers wanted you to!" (I read a lot of interviews with cast members and the director before I saw this movie.)

A lot of the dialogue is actually surprisingly very realistic. The only iffy parts are when Bella and Edward are alone, and you know that when he tells her that he is a "vegetarian" vampire or that he often climbs in through her window to watch her sleep, if she were any real human, she would say: "Holy crap. You're creepy. Go away." Instead, she just kind of melts and says something stupid back to him.

Bella's friends, however, are hilarious. Everything they say is funny, and possibly something that one of my friends might say or has said in the past.

One thing that actually wasn't funny and was instead just all around awesome was the fight scene at the end, between Edward and the evil vampire James. They were both leaping around and punching each other and pushing each other through mirrors, and it was really pretty cool.

Bella's leg did get broken multiple times in the process and she got all bloodied up and almost died, which meant she had to writhe obnoxiously in a hospital bed in the next scene, but the fight was totally worth it anyway.

One thing that really surprised me and made me extremely happy was Kristen Stewart's acting. In the book, Bella is one of the most annoying fictional characters I have never encountered. She is whiny, obnoxious, and boring.

The books are almost entirely told from her perspective, so we get to hear all the stupid thoughts that flow through her mind. In the movie, we aren't so much in her head, so she's a much more believable person. Aside from the hospital bed writhing and her chipmunk front teeth, I was actually really pleased with Stewart's performance.

It's hard to imagine that Catherine Hardwicke and her crew made this film without purposely making it comedic. Parts of the book that were supposed to be serious ended up being so incredibly funny onscreen that I honestly can't tell if the movie was making fun of itself or not. If so, then it is not only one of the funniest movies I've seen all year, but also one of the best movies I've seen all year.

If not, then the film is an even better representation of the book and will entertain you no matter how much you like the series, even if you don't like it at all. I, in fact, plan on seeing it again.

"Twilight" is currently playing at the Goodrich Savoy 16, 232 W. Burwash, Savoy, and the Beverly 18, 910 Meijers Drive, Champaign.

"Twilight" AT A GLANCE

• Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed
• Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
• Written by: Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay), Stephenie Meyer (novel)
• Genre: Action, Horror, Romance, Thriller
• Rated: PG-13
• Runtime: 122 min.
• Release date: Nov. 21, 2008
• Summary (from IMDb): A teenage girl risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire.