Not as good as I was hoping...

Rating: 7/10 (21 November 2008)

ACTUALLY ITS A VERY MILD SPOILER To be honest, I really, really want to like this movie, and I do...sort of.
It does stay pretty true to the book, they even plucked lines straight out of the novel...although some lines could have just stayed in the book as far as I was concerned (there's just no way to use the lion and lamb line without being cheesy, this film proves that). There were some fairly minor deviations from the book, but honestly nothing to get in a snit over. My major beef is that while Stephenie didn't talk down to the readers, the movie did. It just seemed that it was made solely for the 16 year old set, and unfortunately anyone older has a harder time sitting through it. The thing is that the book is more about the love story between Bella and Edward with a villain(s) chucked in at the end; the movie tried to make it more about the threat of the Nomadic vampires against Bella, so we ended up with a really abbreviated love story.
On to the acting (or over-acting)...I wont lie there is no shortage of cheese in this movie. Some of the lines, and the way they are delivered, just make your eyes roll. People in the theater were laughing more about how things were being said than any real humor in the dialogue.
I've come to the grim realization that I HATE Kristen Stewart as Bella, she does this annoying huffing after almost every line! It was beyond annoying, I just wanted to smack her upside the head for each eye roll, shrug and huff she delivered. She made Bella look and feel like such a ditz. I don't know if Kristen had trouble remembering her lines and therefore had to have these huffs and pauses to give herself time to think or what her goal was, but it didn't work for me.
Surprisingly, however, I loved Taylor as Jacob, which is weird because I didn't like his character, nor did I think the actor suited the part; so I'm happily wrong there. Billy Burke and Gil Birmingham (Charlie Swan and Billy Black) were fantastic. Kellen Lutz is perfect as Emmett and even Nikki Reed makes a good bitchy Rosalie. I can't have much of an opinion about the other Cullen actors as they didn't have enough lines nor screen presence to make much of an impression on me (except Jasper, who as Jessica line points out, "looks like he's in pain").
Rachelle Lefevre (Victoria) was also fantastic, she was way better than Cam Gigandet (James) and Edi Gathegi (Laurent).
And let's give it up for the humans! They were much funnier and less cheesy than the vampires (although I didn't like the take on Angela, she's supposed to be shy not a carbon copy of Jessica) The special effects left much to be desired (I HATE the glitter effect). They looked just too cheap and hokey for my tastes, but it's a low budget film, I wasn't really expecting a whole lot there.
I was surprised at how well the soundtrack was incorporated into the movie. I am one of those people who bought the soundtrack and to be honest I really only like four of the songs, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how the hell any of the other songs were going to fit in the movie, but they did a very good job with it. Supermassive Black Hole during the baseball scene was perfect! Oh, I do have to say that I agree with Stephenie, the end credits were awesome.