I wanted to like Twilight, I really did. I'm certain that the gaggle of 'tween and teen girls commanding the theater did, judging by their reaction. This was a rare time when AMC Theater's introductory logo got a round of applause just for suggesting the movie would begin in mere seconds.

I got a kick out of that, along with the earlier forest of raised hands seeking the attention of a radio station flack (wearing a "Team Edward" t-shirt) to answer impressively trivial questions about Stephenie Meyer's book series. Keep reading, kids. It'll pay off with a better movie version of a fave someday.

In a theater seating around 250 people, I counted only 33 males, excluding those of us working as critics and security staff, so we had to be there. A few men I recognized as "chronics," what we call folks seen at nearly every free screening because they haunt ticket giveaways like Marley's ghost.

One guy there by choice was Alex Huie, 22, of Tampa, who spent the pre-show time sitting alone in a handicapped section seat safely away from everyone but me. Alex clutched a copy of Meyer's The Host, which isn't part of the Twilight series. He calls himself a "hit and miss" reader, so an author must really work to keep his attention. He's also a romantic, judging by his response to my question about the seduction potential of knowing books that mostly females enjoy:

"I would like to think so," he said. "But to find something that intense?

"I'd like to think so"

Alex started to say something else but was drowned out by the AMC logo cheer. I said we might talk after the show. But as soon as the end credits began, a lovely young woman he was separated from (get to free screenings early!) leaped into his lap, hugging and cooing about the movie. Never underestimate the power of literacy and cinema, kids.

And the movie? It's fairly dull, if you're not into Robert Pattinson's eyebrows that are thicker than his lips, and his perpetually sullen expression intended to evoke James Dean (you can Google that reference, kids). Dean has been dead for 53 years and can still emote better than Pin-Up Pattinson. His pallor matched the Pacific Northwest landscape perfectly, which is a polite way of saying he blended into the background.

I liked Kristen Stewart as Bella, although she constantly resembled Sigourney Weaver in Alien, tentatively touring high school halls instead of a spaceship. Their expressions of curious dread are the same. Stewart was in my favorite movie last year, Into the Wild, giving me a taste of the automatic affection that "Twilighters" felt for everything else.

Director Catherine Hardwicke previously displayed a nice way with teen angst, in Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. That kind of creative empathy made Twilight's high school and parental interactions better than the script alone.

But Hardwicke treats this material so darn seriously. The best parts of the movie occur when tongues slip past vampiric incisors and lodge firmly in cheeks: Bella meeting the Cullen family, trying to be on their best, non-biting behavior; any scene with Bella's blithely protective police chief father (Billy Burke); and the scholastic twits Bella endures at school, driving her toward the dangerous Cullen clan. Humor is what Meyer's material deserves, not austerity.

And this is a very passive movie, considering it's about vampires. Only one neck and a forearm get bitten, and both are tame attacks. Twilight literally needs more teeth. Watching Edward and his kind  scrambling up pine trees and swooping like love bugs toward windshields is only exciting the first time.

But Twilight will make a bundle at the box office this weekend, likely enough to jumpstart the sequel New Moon that Hardwicke not-so-subtly promises at Twilight's last gleaming. Do the math: 17-million books sold times an average $7 per movie ticket, plus several thousand dragged-along boyfriends and uninformed horror geeks responding to the word "vampire" like Pavlov's dog.