I love you so much, I want to eat you for dinner!

Rating: 4/10 (29 November 2008)

You can totally tell this was originally a novel, because it lacks anything really filmic at all. You could tell it was from the mind of an obvious soap opera loving female author. I went into this film having never heard of Twilight before and having gone with two fans. I came out of the film with a two for one really in how not to make a love story and vampire film.
Here are some tips for if you WANT to make a bad love story/vampire film like Twilight: 1. Have countless scenes of your lead actors just staring at each other in a large room. This was really quite ridiculous. It is so cliché and how shallow can you be to believe that is what falling in love is. Staring. Absolutely boring. This is why the film clocked in at a needless 2hr running time.
2. Write terrible cliché dialogue for your leads. I don't know how many times I had to hear such contrived dialogue. The scene for example where Bella is in the forest with Edward telling him she knows what he is. It screams being artificial. And plus, throughout the whole film we know already and you would have to be stupid in this day of age to not know immediately. It was so bad in parts people in the audience were laughing. One part I never understood was the amount of times Edward came up to Bella and said you have to stay away from me and Bella would respond, no I don't want to stay away from you. From what I could see, Bella did a good job in the beginning of keeping her distance and it was Edward who would constantly come up to speak with her.
3. Rewrite vampire mythology.... badly. Your skin looks like diamonds in the sunlight? Excuse me? This was the kicker for the outbursts of laughter in the theater. Maybe it works better on the page or something, but visually this looked stupid. And am I expected to believe anyway that this town has a cloud of overcast the whole time? Not buying it. And when you are turned into a vampire you immediately become pretty? Um... okay then.
4. Have one of your characters in love with the other person and the other person in love with eating them. Did Edward ever say he loved Bella? Actually did Bella really ever say she loved Edward? For me, I never got any great sense that this was love between them. Edward really just wants to eat Bella throughout the film, but for some reason doesn't want to. I guess there is nothing more romantic than portraying your love than telling them how hard it is not to eat them for dinner. What a turn on. And Bella gives off the impression she just has the hots for the hot guy at high school and wants to have sex with him.
5. To give off the impression you are still making a vampire film show off their powers in a baseball game. I admit, I did enjoy the scene a bit. But really it was just an excuse to inject some kind of action in this otherwise pretty much anemic action film.
There is much more but I restrained myself to five. As the credits rolled, I begun to wonder if having three main creatives being women actually hurt this film. Its quite clear the director and screenwriter being women was not a coincidence. I asked one of my female friends why did they think they hired them. Their response was that maybe because women understand love and romanticism more. I laughed at this response and began to think how absurd a response that could be, considering the majority of the greatest love stories ever told were written by men. I cited Romeo and Juliet on the novel side (a clear inspiration for this story and a bad one at that) and James Cameron's Titantic on the film side. Perhaps what this film needed to make it a bit better was more testosterone in the mix. By the way, the two Twilight fans were also quite disappointed with the film.
The choice of lead actors is quite poor. Never have I seen such boring leads in a teen-aged aimed film. Kristen Stewart is young and fresh, but completely lacks any personality. Throughout the film she plays the same dull emotion. Her character is also fairly unlikeable considering how much she ignores everyone else around her other than the dead guy. There are any number of other young actresses who could have better played that role. Robert Pattinson has the same problems as Kristen Stewart, although more interesting to watch, his dialogue is constantly forced, but so is the writing, so it is a double edge sword constantly.
On the technical side, the cinematography was hideous. I couldn't tell the humans from the vampires since everyone looked pale. I have heard a sequel is going to be made and I would think it could only get better, because I wouldn't want to think it could get worse. However, the people in charge of this would be better served at bringing in a whole new creative team who actually understand how to tell a proper love story and exciting vampire film and a proper lead cast who equally understand. There are much better vampire films out there people and equally better romantic films.
4 out of 10 If the film didn't have that short but fun scene with the vampires trying to play normal humans at the house while meeting Bella for the first time, it would have got 3 out of 10.