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Movie Review: 'Twilight' Has Bite For Book's Fans

Summit Entertainment

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson star in the thriller "Twilight."

By KEVIN WALKER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 20, 2008

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TAMPA - Not long into "Twilight," the teenaged Bella (Kristen Stewart) sits in the cafeteria at her new school in tiny Forks, Wash. She's an awkward kid trying to fit in. And then in walks Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the two see each other for the first time, and they can't stop looking.

That's when the hundreds of teenage girls at the screening I attended began shrieking. We're talking Beatles-at-Shea Stadium sort of shrieking.

That's why "Twilight" will clean up at the box office.

It's not because the movie is great — it isn't. But strip this film down to its essence, and it's about falling in love. And stories about falling in love never go out of style, which explains why they're still making movie versions of "Pride and Prejudice" and "Romeo and Juliet."

This film is based on the first book in the popular series by Stephenie Meyer. The novels are primarily a hit with teenage girls. While one can tease about the shrieking, one cannot (at least this one cannot) have anything but compliments to offer teens, or adults, who read fiction.

For fans, this movie delivers. Stewart's Bella has the right amount of eyes-down awkwardness, Pattinson's Robert is a handsome devil, and the plot is faithful to the book.

That said, the movie is overly long and often painfully slow.

Director Catherine Hardwicke ("The Nativity Story") spends an inordinate amount of time on close-ups of Bella and Edward, presumably so we can feel the angst they feel. Which, by the way, is quite a bit.

The movie opens as the sensitive Bella says: "I never gave much thought to dying. But dying in the place of someone you love seems like a good way to go." This foreshadows two things: this movie is going to be a gothic romance and it's going to require the heroine to sacrifice herself. The movie delivers on both counts.

Bella is moving from Phoenix to Washington to live with her dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), the Forks police chief.

The film gets the leafy, rainy, muddy reality of the Northwest just right, as well as Bella's entrance into the new school. But the film's best sequences come after Bella and Edward fall for each other and she learns he is a vampire.

For a time, Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg lift the movie out of the strum und drang that permeates the film. The best bits involve Edward's vampire family trying to cook and playing baseball. These are "good" vampires who survive by drinking the blood of animals (much like Louis tried to do for a time in Anne Rice's vampire books).

When three nomad vampires show up, one of them, James (Cam Gigandet) hunts Bella, leading to a chase back to Phoenix. Unfortunately, Hardwicke is less adept at action than she is with emoting teens. Also, the effects shots are universally bad.

Still, there's plenty of rain and longing and holding hands in the forest. And everyone is pale and beautiful. Cue the shrieking.