TwilightDirected By: Catherine Hardwicke
Reviewed by: gothiclolitamaiden, 15
Rating: Didn't like it
Oh my goodness. And not in a good way. When I finished watching Twilight, my first thought was that it was horrible, worse than the book. After further thought, I still thought it was horrible, but I remembered the few good points of the movie.
I hated most of the acting and didn’t think that the casting was done very well. The worst casting choice by far was Kristen Stewart as Bella. She is a fairly pretty girl, and I don’t mind the fact that her voice is very low-pitched, even though I had imagined Bella speaking in a slightly higher-pitched tone. My problem is that Kristen Stewart can’t act very well. Even in moments of great anger or passion, she either sounds wooden or extremely bored. Whenever she looks at Edward (Robert Pattinson, who is not a vampire, ladies) her eyes express no true caring for him, only a faint glimmer of lust, which didn’t fit with the book. And there was the fact that she kept on twitching, blinking and shaking her head like a bobblehead doll, even when she was supposed to be perfectly calm. I thought it would be relatively easy to pretend to be in love with Robert Pattinson, seeing as he is rather easy on the eyes, to say the least. I would be able to ignore Kristen Stewart’s bad acting if she played a minor character, but since she’s on screen for a good 90 percent of the movie, it was hard to ignore. I must stop Kristen Stewart-bashing, so I’ll talk about the other actors. Robert Pattinson, unlike his costar, is much more expressive and believable, even if he could be a little creepy sometimes (especially when he says something along the lines of “I like to watch you sleep). I am impressed that he almost completely rid himself of his British accent. If you didn’t know he was British, you wouldn’t guess.
Cam Gigandet breathed life into James, who was a rather flat villain in the book. I liked Rachel Lefevre as Victoria, even though her voice didn’t match the description in Eclipse and her hair was more strawberry blond than red. Laurent’s actor was also pretty good. Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice, Carlisle and Esme all had about three lines each on average, which sort of makes you realize how much time is spent on Bella and Edward and how much the other characters are shunted into the background. The actors for Emmett, Rosalie, Carlisle and Esme all looked and acted pretty well, but Alice and Jasper didn’t work very well for me. They just didn’t look right, and Jasper looked kind of creepy and…crazy. Jessica’s actress (don’t know her name) was the stand-out actress of Bella’s crew of human friends, though it doesn’t take much to act like a shallow, catty girl. Jacob’s actor kind of looked the part, but his acting was a bit awkward.
Usually it bugs me when screen writers add scenes to movies that weren’t in the book, but some of the scenes added into the movie actually helped. For example, the scenes where James and company appeared, attacking unsuspecting humans, foreshadowed their arrival, unlike in the book. In the book, James just appeared out of nowhere, as if the author had added him and his crew as an afterthought and to create an actual conflict. I also preferred the extended fight scene to the book, where Bella simply blacked out and readers missed all of the action. Other scenes, like the tree-jumping scene, were unnecessary. The diner scene in which Stephenie Meyer makes a rather obvious cameo greatly amused me.
The special effects were very corny, which detracted from the movie even more. Everything, from the super-fast vampire running to the sparkly skin, looks almost ridiculous. I thought that the film would have a pretty big budget, but I was wrong. Despite my grumblings, I really liked the soundtrack. There were some really good songs, and the orchestral score caught my attention and pleased me more than most of the acting in the movie, which is kind of sad.
Overall, I’d only recommend this one to diehard Twilight fans or die-hard anti-Twilight people. If you already dislike Twilight, you might get a kick out of this movie.
Recommended to: Die-hard Twilight fans, anyone who would want to see Robert Pattinson shirtless for a couple of seconds. 13+ For violence and one excruciatingly long kissing scene.
