Twilight

Given how much I love the HBO vampire show True Blood and all the success of the Twilight franchise, I really wanted to check this out.  Now, I know that you shouldn’t judge a book from its movie (or TV) adaptation, but from what I’ve seen, Ms. Stephenie Meyer (the creator of the Twilight universe) is no Charlaine Harris (the author of the True Blood books).

Twilight is, fundamentally, a story geared towards dreamy teenage girls who can’t help but fall in love with Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen (and who can blame them??).

The plot: Kristen Stewart’s Bella moves back in with her dad only to be strangely attracted to a group of supposedly elitist loners in her new high school.  Edward belongs to this group and feels drawn to Bella in a similarly strange way.  Naturally, the two start dating after Bella discovers Edward’s big secret (and that of his “family”).  Danger ensues when a rival vampire gang shows interest in Bella as well.

Twilight is, at most, watchable, but it certainly adds very little to the vampire canon or to the motion picture art form in general.  The acting is average: Pattison is fairly good, I can see him having a career beyond this series, but I was unimpressed with Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, who features more prominently in the following chapters, looked downright sheepish.  The supporting cast was ok – although, did super-hot (and good) Cam Gigandet actually have to die so quickly??

The score was average, the visual effects were average, the direction was average, and the screenplay was (you guessed it...) average.  Nothing surprising ever happens and everything is easily foreseen.  Worse yet, you start mentally filling in for what should happen next, as if the story is actually lacking something and your mind is automatically trying to make up for it.

All this brings me back to the opening observation regarding Stephenie Meyer.  While True Blood’s great characters, intriguing locales, and awesome storylines led me to put Ms. Harris’ books on my to-read list, I’m in no hurry to ever even check out Ms. Meyer’s work.

Having said that, I have decided to watch the following chapters in the series because I love vampire stories, I know that the vampire-werewolf rivalry gets center stage later on, and I want to see what the craze is all about.

Furthermore, the eye-candy provided by Pattison, Lautner, Gigandet, Peter Facinelli and Kellan Lutz can hardly be ignored...

Grade: 4