Greasy, Over-Used Plot with Undernourished Characters

Rating: 4/10 (25 March 2012)

I wanted to not hate this film. I was able to overlook the film's nontraditional take on vampires, the cliché love story, and the curious fact that Edward, a vampire hundreds of years old, can find common ground with a seventeen year-old girl. But the character development lacked more life than the vampires themselves. I have seen Pattinson and Stewart in other films before, and while they may not be the great actors of our time, I certainly think they deserved better than the dry, shriveled up husks of characters that I saw in the film.
Stewart plays Bella, a brooding teen who is escaping her mom's remarriage by moving in with her biological father and (apparently) deciding never to smile again. She meets lots of very friendly people, who are genuinely nice, though a little immature, and then proceeds to blow them off throughout the movie in order to get close to a vampire named Edward (played by Pattinson) who doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with her, but doesn't mind stalking her from afar.
Bella is rude, self-centered, and withdrawn, but despite these qualities (or perhaps because of them, as Edward is equally rude and stand-offish) Edward can't seem to keep away from Bella. He eventually reveals himself as a vampire, and they begin to date.
The Characters had no true chemistry. The attraction Edward and Bella displayed for one another seemed to be nothing more than pheromone-based. Edward lusts for Bella's blood, while Bella is drawn by Edward's irresistible vampire qualities. They possessed no commonalities. They exhibited no depth in their interactions. As a love-story it was asthmatic.
The only metaphorical rays of sunshine in the film were the atmosphere of the rainy and dreary town of Forks (which fit the mood quite aptly), and the character of Alice who added life to a superficial dive of a movie.