Twilight

NOTE: This review is the fair and unbiased opinion of someone with extremely little knowledge of the Twilight series. I watched the movie with a few die hard fans who I talked to after the movie, and I will work some of their thoughts into the review.

Another much loved book series has been brought to life in the form of Twilight, which despite having nothing in common with the Harry Potter series, will undoubtedly draw comparisons because of the furor and craze surrounding it. The main difference between the two, however, is that the Harry Potter films are generally good and solid films. Twilight, despite having done a couple things right, is not.

As a story, I will admit, Twilight is very catchy and interesting. Now I see what all the hype is about. If I was a young girl, I would go nuts over this stuff too. It's not just a vampire and a human falling in love with each other, but because of the two leads, it's one of the best on screen romances of the decade. This, however, is severely hurt by the fact that Twilight boasts easily some of the worst writing and editing I've ever seen. Let's not forget about the horrid VFX and pasty makeup, either. It's one of the cheesiest films of the year, and can definitely be put in the category of "so bad it's ALMOST good". Yes, I just invented that category.

The 'allure' of the film appears to be the character played by Robert Pattinson, who ironically was previously known for his role in the Harry Potter series. Pattinson succeeded there and he more than succeeds again, as he more than fit the bill for what he needed to do with the character. Most actors would believe the only requirement of the character is to be good looking, but Pattinson takes it a step further and makes Edward Cullen very likable, trustworthy, and in the end, a good hero for the audience. Kristen Stewart is sort of the queen of not showing facial expressions, so she's perfect for the role of the awkward teen Bella Swann. However, there were sometimes where her lack of emotion bothered me.

Our supporting players...Well, none of them are noteworthy like Pattinson is. The villain of the film is lame, cheesy, and played by an actor I can't take seriously. Nikki Reed is probably the best as Rosalie, Edward's 'sister', and the antagonistic vibe felt from her adds a different side to the movie.

Okay, I don't really know what possessed the writer of this screenplay to make it so horrible (was it the source material?), because the dialog is just so bad that I laughed at serious moments. There's a lot of intentional humor, mostly in the beginning when Bella and Edward feel like awkward teens in love. I guess the movie moved along okay, because I wasn't bored at all. I was either laughing at how stupid the dialog was, laughing at some of the mildly funny jokes, or getting pulled in by the electric chemistry between Stewart and Pattinson.

That, folks, is the reason most people will be able to sit through this movie. The chemistry between the two leads, romantically and sexually, is amazing. In this respect, Pattinson and Stewart are perfectly cast and it makes me wonder if they could end up together in real life some day. I was very surprised by how much I liked seeing their one on one scenes, as cheesy and bad as the VFX and editing are.

As far as these visual effects go, I've seen a few vampire movies in my day. I'm going to assume director Catherine Hardwicke has seen a few. Well, she needs to watch a few more. Her fight scenes are horribly choreographed, terribly shot, and lack the intensity required to successfully rouse her audience. I could almost notice the wires the actors flew across on. I noticed a ton of errors with the editing as well, such as basic stuff like mouths moving and no words coming out, and words coming out when no mouths were moving. The fight scene at the end has wicked bad editing too, as the sound mixing also suffers as well.

All in all, with Twilight, as bad a movie as it may be, I couldn't help but stay interested in it because of the electric chemistry between the leads. That alone kept me in the seat the whole time. It is technically one of the worst films of the year, but the entertainment factor in the above respect keeps it out of the company of movies like Disaster Movie and College. I was actually lucky to see it with some of the fans of the book, and all of them (5) described the movie as a 'disappointment' and that the film went 'half way' with some subplots, either starting and dropping them, or randomly starting them halfway through an individual subplot. They were not happy at all with this movie, but agreed on one thing: Robert Pattinson was the perfect Edward Cullen. I'll agree with them on all those points and say that Twilight is exactly what I thought it would be: so bad it's ALMOST good.

I have read the books, and the first thing I noticed was that the story wasn't about a plot line at all. It's about the characters and what's going on with them. Stephenie Meyer focuses on interaction, not on dialog, plot, or setting, which is fine. But it makes for a bad movie.

Surprisingly, Twilight wasn't that bad of a film. I expected it to be much worse. As I said, there's very little plot or dialog in the book, so it's hard to make a convincing film. They had to over act looks to try and communicate without many words. I could probably count on one hand the lines in the movie.

Other than the over acting, it wasn't bad. There were some very good moments and some very "eh" moments. But overall I would recommend it to Twilight fans. I probably won't ever want to see it again, but it's okay at midnight with some school friends who like it or something.

Surprisingly good, of course it is sometimes a bit sugary, but that's to be expected in a teenage love story. Catherine Hardwicke did a great job, I love her edge. The casting director did well in choosing actors not movie stars to flesh out the book. Robert Pattinson plays the 'Hero' with the right amount of self-loathing and swagger. Kristen Stewart is believable and has a wonderfully tough vulnerability. You can almost see the supporting cast holding back a smile or grin, which made it even better. The Pacific Northwest looks gorgeous. It is a very important character in the film. Twilight made me want to take a trip to Oregon and Washington. A walk along the Cannon Beach coastline or canoe down the Salmon River would be lovely. And it would be worth every penny to hire a guide to hike to the stunning Multnomah Falls. Twilight's target audience will definitely see this movie several times. I believe the film will reach the magic box office number it needs to make sequels : )

First of all I'd like to say that not many movies ever accomplish the difficult task of doing their books justice, but this movie basically made the books look ridiculously lame and cheesy. Anyone who watched the movie first hoping for some insight to the books will NOT want to read the books afterwards because the love story seems so unrealistic..while the reason the books are so popular is because they SEEM like the love between Edward and Bella could actually happen in real life! Until the baseball scene, there was really no action, and the movie just kind of dragged along. Once the "bad" vampires came into play, things finally started to get interesting. I think they should've included more action like this throughout the entire movie to keep viewers attention.

That was my interpretation of this weekend that I had to endure working at my movie theater, all these little hormone crazed brace wearing under developed young girls who I think would've just about died with the anticipation of seeing Twilight, I'm not kidding, I personally witnessed a twelve year old say that she wanted to have Robert Pattinson's baby. OK, so how I saw the movie, my sister, ironically my older sister has been just raving about the Twilight series with her friends and told me that I have to read these books, after weeks of bugging me with it, I finally broke down and read them. Actually it's kind of a fun series, it reminded me of the same love that I had for the TV series Buffy the vampire Slayer when I was a young teen. But of course she has to take me to the midnight premiere with 100,000 crazed fans who were knocking each other down and crawling all over each other just to see a movie.

Bella Swan has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother remarries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn't expect much of anything to change. Then she meets the mysterious and beautiful Edward Cullen. Intelligent and witty, he sees straight into her soul. Soon, Bella and Edward are swept up in a passionate and decidedly unorthodox romance. Edward can run faster than a mountain lion, he can stop a moving car with his bare hands - and he hasn't aged since 1918. Like all vampires, he's immortal. But he doesn't have fangs, and he doesn't drink human blood.

So, my opinion about Twilight the movie... honestly, it's average, it's my junior high romance with a vampire. I hate, beyond hate to say this, I'm a hypocrite for saying this, but because I read the book before I saw the movie, I had this completely different interpretation of what the characters look like and how they say certain lines. Twilight the movie made me laugh more than anything simply because of the actors, Robert and Kristen are not bad actors, but the way they talked, I just couldn't take their "love" seriously. Peter Facinelli who played Carlisle Cullen, Edward's father, was exactly how I pictured and pulled in the best performance of the film. Is it worth the watch, absolutely if you're a fan of the books, otherwise, I would say if you just wanna see this movie, I recommend the matinée price because honestly, I think I may have lost my hearing after this weekend of the none stop screams from crazed teens.

5/10