Rama's Screen

Let me just start by saying that I’ve never read the book that this movie’s based on but I now can see why teen girls everywhere go ga-ga over this. The movie itself is done in a way that it makes you feel like you’re watching… a theatrical CW network episode, it’s hard not to remember series like Smallville or Supernatural when watching TWILIGHT. It can be cliche at times, but it’s to be expected when telling a story about high school romance with complications attached. No matter what you may say about this afterward, you know in your gut that you’ve just watched an instant teen classic.

TWILIGHT is an action-packed, modern day love story between a vampire and a human. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother remarries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn’t expect much of anything to change. Then she meets the mysterious and dazzlingly beautiful Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a boy unlike any she’s ever met. Intelligent and witty, he sees straight into her soul. Soon, Bella and Edward are swept up in a passionate and decidedly unorthodox romance. Edward can run faster than a mountain lion, he can stop a moving car with his bare hands – and he hasn’t aged since 1918. Like all vampires, he’s immortal. But he doesn’t have fangs, and he doesn’t drink human blood; Edward and his family are unique among vampires in their lifestyle choice. To Edward, Bella is that thing he has waited 90 years for – a soul mate. But the closer they get, the more Edward must struggle to resist the primal pull of her scent, which could send him into an uncontrollable frenzy. But what will Edward & Bella do when James (Cam Gigandet), Laurent (Edi Gathegi) and Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), the Cullens’ mortal vampire enemies, come to town, looking for her?

Just to give you a heads up, if you’re going to watch TWILIGHT in a theater room jam-packed with teen audiences, better prepare some ear muffs because they’ll be screaming hysterically everytime the stars of the movie show up on screen or do something that reminds them of a plot in the book that they’ve read repeatedly a thousand times.

Just as I’ve implied earlier, TWILIGHT has all the right ingredients to get a teen audience hooked and seated for the whole duration of the story. From the typical dialogue and the typical humor plus the extravagant showcase of super power abilities all the way to the idea of mysterious man with mysteroius past would come by and sweep you off your feet with his savior complex. Today’s generation goes crazy over that kind of stuff and the movie feeds into that frenzy, if you will. It knows its target market and it does a satisfactory job.

I admit, there are times when this movie makes me laugh unintentionally and by that I mean, some of the scenes are so cheesy and exaggerated while other scenes could’ve done more to entertain but it fell short, I’m guessing it’s the same reason with all book-based movies that try to pack everything into one presentation without hitting a 3 hour mark. What you get in the end, is an attempt and hope for the best.

Director Catherine Hardwicke has done a lot to make sure that even if the teens could notice flaws or changes in the adaptation, they could still enjoy the chemistry between the characters and the escalating intensity that it promises from the beginning to the end of the story, not to mention also some hints of ‘cliffhangers’ that suggest a sequel is underway.
But I’m betting my money that the thrilling cinematography by Elliot Davis is going to get millions to visit the locations of where this movie was filmed. If the landscape doesn’t capture those teens, then the way the camera often does close up focus on Robert Pattinson’s face will. That’s another thing that also cracks me up, how the movie goes the distance to weld into teen’s minds that Pattinson might be their next greek god.

So overall, I wasn’t fully disappointed but I wouldn’t consider it an incredible movie-watching experience. As long as it has decent visual effects, I’m there for the next installments. TWILIGHT serves its purpose and it goes to show that an unlikely romance story between two different characters from two different worlds, to some, will never get old… in a funny way, it plays on the stereotypical assumption that some girls fall for interesting bad boys no matter how risky the relationship could get. At one point, Bella is so head over heels for Edward that she’s willing to be vampire too while Edward tells her that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Love at such a young age does tend to get some people to do things without thinking clearly about it first. TWILIGHT should’ve been rated T for Teens.

* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film