It is impossible to separate Twilight from its fandom.
Thursday night, theaters around the country were filled with teenage girls anxiously anticipating the release of the film version of Stephenie Meyers’ hit novel. Lines of preteens wearing “Team Edward” tshirts sat along the wall before the doors opened. The Twilight series has gotten more kids excited about reading than any book since Harry Potter, and the movie has sparked a similar excitement for the obsessive readers. But is it worth it?
A part of me doesn’t see the point of writing this review, since the people who want to see the movie will see it, regardless of what I say, and the people who don’t want to see it probably still won’t want to see it, at least not within the first two weeks. It’s not that the movie can’t stand on its own, away from the books- it can. It’s that the fans in the audience cheer, sigh, and applaud so loudly at parts that foreshadow or portray parts of the novel that it can ruin the mystery of the story for anyone who doesn’t know it.
That said, the movie is a decent movie. Nitpicky fans of the books will probably find issues with the representation, but for my own part, it got the plot down pretty well. If you would like to compare it to any of the Harry Potters, compare it to the fourth. The move is beautiful visually with a great soundtrack, and the only real plot changes are artistic and cinematic licenses that make it flow more smoothly on the silver screen.
As the leads, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson perform well as Bella and Edward. Kristen Stewart is adorable when she trips over everything in her path and accidentally hits a classmate in the head with a volleyball, and her performance otherwise is reminiscent of her quiet, understated performance in Speak (but with less angst). As Edward, Robert Pattinson is slightly more awkward than his literary counterpart, but this just adds to his believability as a boy changed into a vampire at seventeen, and keeping his seventeen-year-old mindset. The two of them make a nice couple, much more realistic and likeable than their characters in the books (though militant “Team Edward” members will probably disagree).
Once fans can pry their eyes away from Robert Pattinson, they can admire the rest of the movie. As Charlie, Bella’s quiet and slightly awkward father, Billy Burke gives a wonderful performance. At first, he seemed a little stiff, but as the movie goes on, his acting is much more believable and much more heartwarming. His facial expression in one crucial scene towards the end of the movie is more emotion-inducing than every lovey-dovey scene between Edward and Bella combined. Visually, the film is stunning, capturing every possible bit of beauty that Washington State has to offer. Fans who have never seen Forks, La Push, or Port Angeles will now be able to understand exactly what Bella gets to wake up to every morning, and no amount of rain can make that view ugly. The soundtrack is a decent but not overbearing backdrop to the film, and the screenplay allows for little moments of dialogue that make the entire movie.
The film’s flaws come mainly from the story itself and the filmmaker’s duty to the squealing fanbase. The least believable moments are the love proclamation scenes between Edward and Bella that could easily have been taken out, except that fans would have revolted. Robert Pattinson spends many close-ups staring moodily into space, as if the filmmakers really wanted to make screenshots for teenage girls’ posters. And, of course, it is impossible to hear much of the film with the applause and swooning from the peanut gallery every time Pattinson appears on film. But, such is the territory of fan candy.
Grade: B
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