Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I consider myself a Twilight fan. I love the books and since reading the first one have bought the other three the day they came out. I was extremely excited about the movie, and went to see it opening night. My first thought by the halfway point of the movie was: WHY DID I SPEND MONEY ON THIS?!!!!!!!! Twilight: The Movie is a horrible, campy, tacky, CHEAP vampire story that swallows almost all of the power of the novels. The vampire special effects are even WORSE than "Queen of the Damned" (which is hard to achieve), and the "action" scenes were scripted, confusing, and in some cases pointless and lame. The acting was off and it was awful. Kristin Stewart was weak and ineffectual as Bella. She portrays none of Bella's strengths and instead presents her as, essentially, a weakling, a coward and a whiner. Rob Pattinson's Edward is kind of creepy, kind of tacky, and completely unromantic; in fact, he's kind of off-putting. None of the Cullens act like they're supposed to except Rosalie and Alice, so of course they only got about five lines each in the entire movie. The worst acting choice was whoever played Charlie -- he's a dead fish in the entire movie. He never displays ANY emotion. Now, in the books Charlie IS kind of closed-off, but he DOES get upset -- like when Bella says she's running away, for instance. In the movie, he's quiet and unmoved and seems to say nothing but "Oh, my daughter's running away. Don't go, Bella. Please stay, Bella. Wonder what's on TV?" However, first and foremost, the love story element was RUINED by the script. Bella and Edward are awkward as can be together, and at one point Edward makes the cryptic comment "It would be better for you if we weren't friends." Now, at this point in the movie, he's been nothing but a supreme jerk to Bella at every turn. If I were Bella, my response would have been: 'What?! We AREN'T friends! You're a creeper and you need to go before I call the cops! Stranger danger! [Makes sign of the cross]' By the time they're 'together' as a couple it feels so rushed and unnatural that you have to gag at some of Bella's more romantic thoughts, which make perfect sense in the book. One of the worst mistakes they made was combining about five different important scenes and shortening them into one confusing scene: the meadow scene, combined with the first running scene, combined with the skipping class scene, combined with three other minor scenes. It was rushed, confusing, creepy, unromantic, weird, badly acted, badly shot, and badly directed. The dynamic of Bella and Edward was ruined -- Edward is supposed to be so supremely larger than life to Bella; for instance, in the book when he runs (he's supposed to look like a blur, which the movie of course killed off right away) with Bella the first time she's violently ill and can't stand for a moment. In the movie she just hops off his back as if to say 'Alright, I do this all the time.' In the book, James, the villain, is actually rather terrifying. In the movie...okay, the actor is admittedly very attractive. But -- have you ever seen the movie "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (NOT the show, because the show was amazing; the movie was awful)? You know, where Rutger Hauer played the most CAMPY, RIDICULOUS vampire EVER? Well, James almost TOPS his performance in "Buffy" -- again, VERY hard to achieve. Another point of unintended comedy? Bella and Edward spend half the friggin' movie in a TREE. Why? NO ONE KNOWS. He calls her "spider monkey," for the love of GOD. It's SILLY! And then when the Cullens jump at the 'bad vampires'? It looks like they're about to perform the song and dance "fight" in the first scene of "West Side Story!" How utterly absurd! The casting was awful, the acting was awful, the script was awful, the special effects were AWFUL. Possibly the only good points about this movie was the first five minutes, which actually did a very good job for some strange reason, and the last five minutes, which also did a very good job, for some strange reason. Every other minute of the movie was excruciating in its mediocrity. I pray to God every day that people don't watch this D-Grade piece of CRAP movie and go away thinking to themselves, "Well, now I KNOW I'll never read 'Twilight' after watching THAT crap."