| Overall Grade: |
D+ |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
C |
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| Direction: |
F |
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| Visuals: |
D |
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This Movie Lacked Real Bite...Pun Intended.
by Kia (movies profile)
Nov 20, 2008
144
of
220 people found this review helpful
Oh.No. That's all I could say as the credits rolled. More like what I wanted to scream. This proves the theory that movies RARELY get the books they're based off right. To be fair, no matter how well (and rarely) a movie may be, it usually cannot compare to the book. Unless it becomes okay to make/sit through 4-10 hr movies, they just can't fit everything in. It's impossible. However, whoever takes on the daunting task of translating book to film has the complete responsibility of getting the very essense of the material and get it right. Peter Jackson did an incredible job with "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and as long as those movies were...he STILL wasn't able to squeeze in everything but what he did get in was ADMIRABLE. In a rare instance, "The Notebook" was a way better movie versus the book-which I found extremely boring. Those points made, I went into the midnight showing of "Twilight" not expecting verbatim but expecting a good movie that got it right with the characters and concentrated on how Bella and Edward fell for each other enough to go through all of what they ended up going through for each other. What I endured, was an absolute travesty for many reasons. For one, the casting was way off base for half the cast. The right half: Alice, Emmett,Carlisle, Chief Snow and the teens at the school. The wrong half: Bella, Jacob, Billy, Rosalie, Jasper and Esme. Edward was a toss up for me because although Rob Patterson did well...he just didn't live up to the Edward from the books. I think that was my problem with most of the Cullen family other than Alice and Emmett, that did not live up to the haunted beauty from the books. Bella wasn't ORDINARY enough for me. Yeah, she was awkward but it just wasn't enough. Billy's attempts at hipness were horrific and false. I was distracted by Jacob's half wig whenever he came on screen and he just didn't seem to embody the Jacob from the book. Second, there was way too much emphasis on special effects and very little character development. It was like Bella and Edward met in one scene and then a few scenes later are going out...and at many times too much material from the book was cut to beef up action scenes and the "bad" vampires. Third, changing way too much from the book. I was really peeved with many of the things they changed: the complete omission of the "girl's choice" dance, having Edward expose himself in sunlight early on after school, Bella loosing Alice and Jasper at the airport (which made them look kinda dumb, since the small hotel lobby population wouldn't have been enough to distract them from Bella) and Bella being awake during the fight between Edward and James and all of the vampires jumping out from nowhere to fight together. I could go on. There were a few things cool to see, despite this mess. The baseball game was pretty awesome, Edward's "I want to try something" and even when he saved Bella. Overall, though...it was horrible to be completely honest. In fact, I'm going to reread the book and lick my wounds. This viewing proved painful. You could say...it lacked real bite, pun intended. |
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