TWILIGHT

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Twilight, at least for a select set of ladies, has been THE most anticipated movie of 2008 - and their wait is finally over. The inquiry is: Was it worth WATCHING it?
For them, of course yes.

Twilight opens through the introduction of our heroine, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). She is in sunny Arizona with her mom and new stepfather, and as they get ready for a long road trip she decides that she'd rather go up to Washington state to live with her estranged father, Charlie (Billy Burke). He lives in the little town of Forks (population 3,000) and is the local sheriff.

She arrive in the middle of the school year so although it should be hard to make friends (and it's implied), she manage to connect with a set of kids who are far more welcoming than she is ready to be welcomed. They give her the scoop on who's who and they soon point out the Cullens, an odd collection of very pale-skinned guys and gals. To make things weirder, they are actually foster brothers/sisters yet they are "couples." They've been in use in by the local Dr.

One of the groups is of course, Edward (Robert Pattinson). As a matter of fact when she is assign to be his lab partner, he seems to be repulsed by her.
He's now polite and at slightest feigns interest. She (mostly) gets over being affronted and tries to get to know him although he still doesn't want to get close to her. Almost directly he saves her from being killed in a car accident in a scene that's been shown in the trailer. She's no dummy and doesn't miss the fact that he was across the parking lot, got over to her in a flash and was able to keep a van from crashing into her (to the point that he left a dent in the door with his hand).

Cullen (Peter Facinelli) at the hospital, whose makeup job is so extremely white that he looks like the Cesar Romero version of the Joker. He is none to satisfied about Edward (I guess I can't call him "Ed," huh?) perhaps exposing who he really is to save Bella's life.
One thing leads to another and the burgeoning romance is on its way, with a side trip to a confrontation with the "bad" vampires who actually kill humans to feed (go figure). You see the Cullens only drink the blood of animals. The bad guys have been responsible for a number of horrible murders in town recently.

I thought that the stars and supporting cast actually did a really immense job. Bella's friends were engaging, funny and they played their roles very obviously. I don't know how intimately the way he played the character matched the version in the book, but I thought that his uncertainty and awkwardness in light of how powerful he really was made him quite charming.

There were quite a little moments of unexpected humor in the film that I enjoyed. Nothing massive or slap sticky, but just little things that were enough to actually make me laugh out loud (which some comedies this year didn't manage to make me do). Really the performance made this worthwhile for me.
Towards the end the teen-romance-cheese-factor pegged the needle in the aftermath of the huge battle in a scene between Edward and Bella.

The audience full of Twilight fans seemed to like it a lot and gave it thumbs up, so I guess it's achieved its goal. I'm inquisitive to see if it does well enough at the box office to generate a sequel (which I'm thinking would actually be better than this film).

So take all that for what it's worth - I'll leave the verdict of whether to see it or not is up to you.

Oh, and yes (for the fans), Edward does "sparkle" in the movie.

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