Twilight movie review

Twilight doesn't quite shine

By Vanessa Ho

Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to love Catherine Hardwicke's adaption of Stephenie Meyer's widely popular vampire romance Twilight. After all I fell in love with the books that depict the epic love story between ordinary high schooler Bella Swan (played how I imagined her to be by Kristen Stewart) and an impossibly beautiful vampire named Edward Cullen (the perfectly cast Robert Pattinson aka Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter).

But alas, I didn’t. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has been very faithful to Meyer's first book in the Twilight saga and even cribbed a lot of the dialogue from the novel but certain scenes just didn't translate well to the screen as they did on the page. For instance, the first moment that Edward sees Bella in biology, he is repulsed by her smell because he is overwhelmingly attracted to her human scent but the scene just comes off as unintentionally funny they way Pattinson held his mouth and nose as if he is about to throw up.

But I am getting ahead of myself, Twilight starts with Bella moving away from sunny Phoenix to

dreary Forks, Washington to live with her father (Billy Burke) after her mother (Sarah Clarke) remarries and wants to travel with her new husband as he tries to make it as a professional baseball player. Soon after starting at the new school, she attracts the unwanted attention of many of the boys at the school but she is immediately intrigued by Edward and his family. At this point, she doesn’t suspect them to be vampires. Edward constantly avoids her and I guess that makes him more attractive to her. Eventually, she figures out who he is, thanks to some help from childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and confronts him with her theories, which he confirms by showing her various things.

Edward takes Bella to meet his vampire family and explains that they aren't like other vampires. The only hunt animals. However, Bella's life becomes endangered after another vampire called James (Cam Gigandet) smells Bella and wants her blood, thus setting up a battle to save her life or doom her to become a vampire.

The most important aspect to me of any adaptation of Twilight is chemistry. Do Pattinson and Stewart have chemistry? From the trailers and photos I've seen, I inferred that they did and when I finally saw the movie, I agree. It was a very slow burn chemistry (much like how the characters in the book slowly fall in love) and culminated to a very hot kiss in Bella's bedroom.

Stewart has to carry the whole film as Bella is the central character and she does a great job but at times, especially near the end after the climactic battle, she was a bit over the top in her line delivery.

And you can tell that this film was made for only $40 million. The special effects weren't great, especially during a pivotal scene between Edward and Bella that I won't spoil to those that haven’t read the books. Here's hoping that New Moon, the next film in the Twilight Saga will have a bigger budget and better special effects.

But at the heart of this film is the love story between Bella and Edward and after being away from the film for a few hours, that is really all I can think about and what I think about after I've read the novels so in that sense, the film succeeded in my expectations of capturing their love. After all, I am quite the romantic.