Comfort food of vampire romance

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2008)

I read the article about Summit in the NY Times, and went to see the movie out of curiosity. I'd never read the books, or even seen a preview, so I went in as a completely blank slate.
To be honest, I was stunned. There are no surprises beyond moving vampires further down the monster-to-sex-symbol spectrum than ever before. But this predictability is one of the best parts in my opinion. It gives you exactly what you want. Good guys win, bad guys lose, and love conquers all. Filmmakers have latched so strongly onto the fad of unnecessary twists, turns and sudden deaths that this story feels like coming back to a bar of pure dark chocolate. Sometimes that simple, sensual experience is all you crave.
My first impressions through the introduction of Bella, her family, and her new friends were highly positive. I did not expect the characters to be so believable. The kids were excellently cast and did a very good job of portraying the social dynamics of high school without clinging to overblown clichés. Bella's father was one of the best cast and best acted characters in the whole film.
Then come the Cullens. I'm a college-age female, so the men of the family had the predictable effect on my heart rate. But, again, I think they did a good job. Carlisle radiated kindness and authority, Emmet was just fun, Alice was the perfect combination of vampire and pixie, and Jasper's intensity worked because he layered a kind of self-awareness under it that allowed it to be funny. I was thrilled with the casting of Rosalie because she is exactly what I consider spectacularly beautiful, though her kind of looks have gone out of fashion.
The two leads were excellent. I've never seen a young actress mix so many elements into portraying individual moments. In the first conversation in Biology, she manages to communicate confusion, attraction, shyness, and defiance without seeming to plan any of it. Edward's best moments were when the character was the most self-aware. He had to show the depth, patience, and experience of an old man underneath a seventeen year old in the throes of first love. But he was always at his best when he had that slightly self-mocking smirk as he struggled to reconcile his existence up to this point with the very human feeling of adolescent passion.
Of course, some of their more melodramatic scenes were iffy. So far, it seems to depend on the audience. If the crowd is quiet, you can absorb their intensity and make of it what you will. But if your theater is infested with less considerate gigglers, it's impossible to take seriously. I think a lot of what they said could have been more acceptable if more time was spent building up to it. Or if they had kept up the the characters' attempts to be offhand when expressing emotions that meant a great deal to them.
As far as the more technical aspects of the film go, the cinematography was breathtaking while the special effects were mediocre at best. They took full advantage of the spectacular setting in the Pacific Northwest. The visual effects really weren't very good though. I didn't mind the streaked-running effect except when Edward was carrying Bella, and the diamond-skin dazzle was passable and mercifully short. Outside of the baseball game, however, the wire work was awful. You could see from the motion of the actor's bodies that their center of gravity was at the harness, rather than where it would have been if they had actually jumped from the ground. The fight scene was cringe-worthy. If it weren't for Bella's convincing performance of the pain she was in, the whole ballet studio sequence would be a good time to go to the water fountain.
I think this film's reception thus far has suffered due to the nature of its strengths and weaknesses. Most of the film is spent exploring the casual lives of the characters, and the understated character development is very very well done. It is the more intense scenes ("my personal brand of heroin" and the final fight) that feel a little too overdone. Unfortunately, this is what stands out in people's memories.
In the end, I loved the movie. I'm glad I watched it before reading the books because I would have done some things differently in retrospect, but I think they did a very good job overall. If dreams come true, Midnight Sun will be published and made into a movie along with the rest of the books. They will be able to go back to this story, tweak the few weak spots, and bring this very good film into full flower.