Meh

Rating: 5/10 (7 December 2009)

I have not read the books, and am just basing this off of the acting and dialogue present in the story.
First, let me just that I felt as if the only player acting with any conviction was Lautner. His character was believably obsessed w/ Stewart's character, and you could feel the angst in his dialogue, regardless of how poor it was.
Greene was also a scene stealer, though her scenes were few and far between.
I gave this a 5/10 based off of Stewart's and Pattinson's performances. We are supposed to believe that these star-crossed lovers are deeply devoted to one another and insanely in love, but there was no chemistry, and no emotion in either of them.
The movie also tries to parallel Twilight to Romeo and Juliet in the first 20 minutes of the film... If you have to parallel your story to a famous romance to convey the relationship your two protagonists have with one another, you have failed as a writer.
Stewart acts like she's distracted or that she's too good for the Twilight crowd. The detachment that she feels halfway through the movie seems real, but she acts like that while she's with Pattinson. If she thinks this gig is just a means to a career, she has another thing coming, and she better fine tune her acting- I'll assume based on what I saw that her Joan Jett biopic will be a disaster.
Pattison is like a dolled up zombie for the entire movie, and his "you are my everything" lines scream "we don't know how to write love". He speaks with no conviction or passion, yet that's everything his character is supposed to represent... he also has a funny looking left nipple (see the scene where he rips off his shirt).
Actually my biggest pet peeve of both movies is the musical transition for the budding relationship. We're supposed to believe these people are falling in love, but have nothing but a music video to base anything off of.
Maybe the movie fails because of the actors, maybe it's the writers' faults, maybe it's both, but unless you're the obsessed fangirl that saw this movie in week one, the only character remotely relatable is Jacob, due to a fairly mature performance by Lautner.
I went in expecting mediocrity and that's what I got. My girlfriend is making me read the books before the next one, so maybe I'll have a different perspective this time next year.