Shawn's Twilight Review

2008 Movie #127 - Twilight

A few months ago my girlfriend and I went into a Chapters because there was a new book I really wanted to pick up. While there I made an offhand remark about how I heard this Twilight book was really good. It was only 10 bucks so she decided to give it a shot. Just one short month later and she had read all 4 books and was pumped as hell for the upcoming movie. I had created a monster and I was now essentially doomed to also go see the movie. The tragedy is, I never even read the book I bought that day so the trip was pointless on my end. At least I got to go and see this movie?

I can sum it up pretty simply …I don’t get it. I know I’m not the target audience but really, I don’t get it. I’ve talked with many people who completely loved the book and said while the movie doesn’t stack up, its still great. A couple of people have even refered to the movie as “the best movie ever”. I..I don’t get it. I guess girls just really like pale dudes? Is that it?

My review of this movie means virtually nothing because it’s obviously not made for me. I can sort of maybe see the appeal for girls but not really even. Sure it’s a love story but to me there are much better love stories out there. Hell Wall-e told a much, much better love story and it was between two cartoon robots.

The love story between the two leads was one of my bigger problems with the movie. I never once for a second bought that these two were in love, or meant for each other. He’s established that he’s basically just attracted to her scent, which I think just means he wants to eat her. I don’t really know what she sees in him. Yea it was nice of him to save her from bad drivers and rapists and stuff but to be willing to die to be with him forever? You’ve known him like a week. Come on now. I just never really bought into it.

The acting is for the most part pretty good, but nothing that really blew my mind. Some of the bad guy vampires (especially the lead) aren’t very good though. The villians were actually another problem I had with the movie. They’re introduced very late in the movie, and then vanish just as quickly. The main guy is established as the ultimate badass vampire who everyone is, or should be, afraid of. When you make promises like that, you damn sure better deliver on them. This movie does not. This lead vampire is far from intimidating and certainly doesn’t put up much of a fight in the end. It just seemed like they needed something to put in the trailers to make the movie look more action oriented. They sure as hell fooled me.

To round out a few of my other problems with the movie, it runs about 2 hours and it does drag in parts. Some of the dialogue is very silly and stiff. It seemed like it was trying to tell too much story in the time it had and as a result it feels very disjointed and many things go unexplained. I basically was told that the book does a much better job of telling the story. So why all the love for this movie then? I don’t know…I just don’t get it.

**/5