A pale vampire falls in love with a human and they run together to escape the “bad guys.” With the help of bad acting and poor special effects, the film adaptation of the four-book “Twilight” series explores this story in more depth, and it’s about as interesting as it sounds: not at all.

The washed-out film style paints the vampire and his lover as extraordinarily pale and fragile, yet the vampire has super strength.

Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, the characters are deep in the plot.

The female lead, Bella (Kristen Stewart), looks as though she hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in weeks, and she acts accordingly. She looks into the eyes of the vampire (Robert Pattinson’s), and with a voice devoid of emotion she tells him that she loves him.

The special effects add to the overall disinteresting film. The vampire, known in human form as Edward Cullen, shines in the daylight—literally. As he steps in to the light to show his lover, Bella, his true side, he sparkles like someone sprayed him down with glue and then sneezed glitter all over his body.

Edward also uses his super powers to run and jump at superhuman levels, achieved with a too-obvious attached wire and green screen. As he runs through the forest, the effect makes the scene look like a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon, with Edward’s legs in a blurred circle.

Special effects aside, a movie’s true success lies in the acting. Like a bad soap opera, Edward speaks throughout the film as though his every word were a matter of life and death. Bella doesn’t do much better—even as tears run down her face, her expression remains unchanged.

The movie has quickly become a worldwide sensation. But I have neither read the books nor watched the sequel, and I don’t plan to do either, based on the quality of the first film.

It seems the famous saying that “love is blind” has been proven accurate once again—to love this movie, you would have to be.