I'm not sold on Stephenie Meyer's idea of a vampire.

As I'm old-school about vampire tales, it's difficult to accept a family of abstaining bloodsuckers who walk around in daylight, cast reflections, keep crosses in their house and glisten like diamonds under direct sunlight -- rather than, you know, bursting into flames.

But in "Twilight," thanks to the tender handling of Meyer's central romance by director Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen," "The Nativity Story") and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (TV's "Dexter"), such qualms fade into the background -- up until the finale, when those problems come flooding back.

For those who haven't read Meyer's best-selling book series (like me), a quick tutorial: Gawky teen Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves from her mother's home in Phoenix to the perpetually overcast town of Forks, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula, where her dad (Billy Burke) is the police chief. Bella quickly makes friends among the high school's geeks -- and watches with fascination when the Cullens, the mysterious adopted children of the town's doctor (Peter Facinell), walk into the cafeteria. And when the hunkiest Cullen, Edward (Robert Pattinson), rudely avoids her, Bella is even more intrigued.

It's not giving anything away to reveal that the Cullens are vampires. They're the good kind, though -- they drink animal blood and never hunt humans, even though we're so tasty. And with their all-white wardrobe and a talent for glimmering in sunlight, they look more like Glinda the Good Witch's relatives than the kin of Dracula and Nosferatu.

When Hardwicke concentrates on Bella and Edward, and the couple's attempts to tamp down their romantic tension before Edward takes a bite he might regret, "Twilight" soars. Stewart, who has grown into a coltish beauty since "Panic Room," gives Bella a spark of defiant strength, which plays well against the pin-up looks of Pattinson.

After setting up the Bella/Edward relationship, and hinting at something with the lupine Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) that won't be resolved until the sequel, "Twilight" doesn't deliver the slam-bang ending that's required. A showdown between Edward and a hunter-predator (Cam Gigandet) skimps on spectacle and is disappointingly bloodless for a vampire epic.

Like Bella and Edward's love, the movie offers a lot of buildup and not much resolution.

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