'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse' review

Title: Twilight: Eclipse
Director: David Slade
Staring: Kristen Stewart, Robbert Pattinson, Tayler Lautner
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Genre(s): Romance/Action
Rated:

(For intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality)

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Here we go again. Another installment in “Twilight” franchise is here. Time to get out my Rolodex of bad vampire, werewolves, and glitter jokes ready. By now we all know what these movies are about (and they’re not about the script). I have now sat through two of these insipid films and watching a third one wasn’t exactly tickling my interest. But what’s this? Why the opening the of movie is...good. Stylish even. It sets up a mood, atmosphere, and tension that actually got me to sit up in my chair and cautiously wonder if the movie would be good. Then the characters started speaking and I shrunk back down in my chair.

The movie picks up where the events of the last film left off, and Bella (Kirsten Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are in a field talking about their lives with the awful dialog we’ve come to expect from these morons. Today the conversation is sex. Bella wants to have sex. Edward wants to get married first. Bella doesn’t want that. Edward does. Jeez folks, may I ask again WHY this series is popular?! These characters do almost nothing but give me a headache, and they aren’t even that interesting. Never mind.

After this conversation the two run into Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) who is understandably upset that Bella choose Edward over him, but because he’s a nice guy he takes the time to warn them that evil vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) is back in town ready to kill Bella. It’s revenge for Edward killed her boyfriend from the first film. This is where I just sort of looked at the screen and wondered why it’s taken two films for this to become a reality. Bella is just a normal girl and killing her should not be difficult. But this is going to be SO difficult, is SO important, that Victoria builds an entire vampire army for this one simple task!

And over a guy no less. God this is such teenage fantasy dribble. Because of the size of the army the vampires and the werewolves call a reluctant truce to fight the vampires. This all leads to (*sigh*) one of the coolest things I’ve seen all year. Yes folks, this is where I have to pull back my sarcasm and admit that the climax of this film is very, VERY good! It’s tense, suspenseful, stylish, emotionally compelling...really, it’s what the whole movie should be. This series has never had a consistent director only a consistent trait: The directors of the first two films had little to no real experience directing big budget action films.

What’s worse is that they decided to be true to the books. New director David Slade previously worked on another vampire film “30 Days of Night,” which was praised at the time for making a stale vampire movie fresh with it’s visuals and pacing. Imagine, getting a director who might actually suit the material well. Never thought I'd see the day. While he can’t make the material here any better he has at least polished it so that it’s not very painful to watch (and in some cases the movie is quite fun). Seriously, some of the action sequences are SO entertaining I walked out of the movie almost shocked that I didn’t hate it! I was even thinking I might actually have liked this installment.

Sadly I just can’t recommend it. While this movie is far and above the best installment and a HUGE improvement over the previous two films, the story still isn’t very compelling, the acting is still pretty bad, and the dialog is still very stupid! I also questioned what the point of putting all these characters in mortal danger for a girl that does very little except cause frustrations to them is likely. The best option for everyone would be to let Vitoria kill Bella so that everyone else can just get on with their lives. But I digress, this IS a better movie then I expected, and it almost makes me believe the next two films will actually be good! They just have to work on that damn screenplay some more.