Not bad, but a lot of room for improvement

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2008)

Before I begin, let me just say that I haven't read the book, so I'm not some die-hard Twilight fan or anything. In fact I hadn't even heard of either the book or the movie until a couple of months ago when my cousin (who had been reading the entire series) showed me her books and talked to me about it. She even said that there was a movie for the first book that was going to be released in a couple of months time. I remained uninterested, and I still lacked the enthusiasm to actually want to watch this movie in the first place, despite all of the frenzy over it, particularly with my female friends who, at the moment, have gone absolutely gaga over the male lead, Robert Pattinson (who plays the role of Edward).
It was only two days ago, when a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen since June (because I moved to another school), asked me if I wanted to go to the cinema with him to watch Twilight. There really wasn't anything else on that could have been better, so I just thought "what the heck, might as well give it a shot". And so I did.
This friend of mine is not really the kind of person to be watching movies like Twilight. Indeed, he is more of an action/superhero film type person, and so I don't think he liked the film that much (at the end I noticed an iPod earphone in his ear - need I say more?). Even now I'm still quite surprised that he even suggested watching Twilight in the first place.
I, on the other hand, consider myself more open to different film types, and I enjoy a little bit of almost everything, Twilight being no exception.
The choice of actors was simply a job well done; all of them fit into their roles perfectly. Pattinson, with his amazing, masculine good looks and pale skin, fits perfectly into role of the "both-warm-and-cold" vampire that is Edward Cullens. What I mean by "both-warm-and-cold" is that despite his cold looks and temperaments, he is an extremely likable character and his somewhat hopeless romanticism takes over slightly without tarnishing his vampire image. I honestly couldn't think of anyone else who could suit Edward's role better than Pattinson. Needless to say, he also makes really good eye candy.
The choice of Kristen Stewart as Bella is also very noteworthy, as she also manages to fit her role as a pale, very reserved young woman really well. Bravo to her too.
Just - bravo to both of them. Never have I seen such chemistry in a film. They are just such an item, and it's easy to see how much in love the two characters are thanks to these two wonderful actors.
I felt that the film was filmed really well, too. I particularly love how every second of the film in Forks (the main setting of the movie) looks so cold and grim, and it kind of adds to the whole bleakness of it all.
All of this, however, does not mean that Twilight doesn't have it's flaws. In the first half of the movie, despite it starting of well, it really seemed to have dragged on quite a bit and it wasn't until the second half that things started to get really engaging and interesting, and even exciting. Unfortunately I still don't quite understand one or two elements of the plot as much as I would have wanted to, so obviously that's a major flaw too.
On a more minor note, the special effects could have been a little better, particularly with the whole "speedy vampire" business, which looked somewhat unrealistic, but despite it being unrealistic in the first place anyway, the special FX people could have made it seem more real than it actually did.
Nevertheless, the above criticisms do not change the fact that it is definitely a watchable movie. It's not perfect, and it definitely could have been, but I guess at least it's kind of gotten me interested in reading the book, now. After watching that film, now I want to read the book so that I can finally understand those things that I didn't. In a way, my criticism of that may be considered a bit of an irony, but it is still no excuse to make the plot incomprehensible. Like I said, the film could have been much better.