Thursday, November 27

Twilight - Movie Review


Twilight Nov 25, '08 9:35 PM
for everyone

Category: Movies
Genre: Other

I haven't read the book. Which doen't mean I'm not aware of the hoopla surrounding the book and the movie. So I went in the theater with my girlfriend vaguely knowing what the story is about and having zero expectations.
For the record, my knowledge of the story can be summarized into three things:

1) The guy is a vampire who is unaffected by sunlight.
2) The girl is human.
3) It's a love story between them.

So here we go.

It's very rare that I watch a movie in which I hardly recognize any of the actors. The closest I got to recognizing any of them was Esme Cullen (Elizabeth Reaser) who played Rebecca in Grey's anatomy. The fact that I do not recognize any of them was actually a plus this time as I was able to focus on whether or not they were good in their roles or not.

The lead actors did pretty well especially with the considerable weight of expectations on their shoulders. There was viable chemistry between Bella(Kristin Stewart) and Edward(Robert Pattinson) and in this kind of movie, that is the key. No chemistry, no romantic movie. I only wonder how much of it is acting and how much of it is reality. I've seen both of them on tv and Pattinson looked even more like a vampire in real life. Stewart on the other hand had the exact same "I'm so nervous but I'm not scared" expression the entire time she was being interviewed by Letterman last week.

It was clear that Hardwicke knew the material she was handling when she took on this project. She knew that there was a need to emphasize on the leads' relationship rather than go for some action sequences which came almost as a mere afterthought in the last twenty minutes.

Being that it is an adaptation of a book, I'm sure that there are a lot of parts that were missing. The chief complaints of my girlfriend who did read the book were that the line "Do I dazzle you?" wasn't in the movie and that the girl who played Victoria was less beautiful than expected.

Indeed there were parts of the movie which I found far more interesting than the love story. Dr. Cullen's relationship with his family and how a vampire can be a doctor was something that I wish I knew more about for example.

While there were some cheesy parts (the scene where Edward was telling Bella "As if you can outrun me?!" and so on and so forth while showing his powers was extremely excruciating to watch) the overall feel of the movie was that it was a good start for a franchise. While it did not make me grab my hair at the thought that I can't watch the next movie yet (as I did when Lord of the Rings: FOTR came out), it did make me want to read the book while waiting for the next one.

While Twilight didn't dazzle me, it doesn't mean that it didn't shine.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

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