The Twilight Saga: Eclipse -Movie Review

*** POTENTIAL SPOILERS ***
Be warned, if you have not read the books or seen the movie, this review may contain spoilers.

In the past I have reviewed Twilight & New Moon. Click the names to see those past reviews.

Again I braved the masses of squealing fangirls (and boys) at a midnight showing, to enjoy a little over two hours of sparkly vampire goodness. Actually I must say the squealing teenagers kept their antics to a minimum this time around. There was a noticeable difference in the amount and level of squealing. And, not once was I asked, who's team was I on?

So, on to the movie. We open with the flashback to a dark and stormy night( lol) where Riley is created. It was a quick scene that didn't really show much more than him being knocked to the ground. You don't even get to see him bitten.

Seriously, it's a vampire move. Show at least one person get bitten!! The wolves are the only ones biting things here. Hope that doesn't ruin it for you.

From there we are taken right back to where New Moon left off. Edward is practically begging Bella to marry him and she is adverse to the idea of marriage.  She in turn, is begging to be turned.

Now, I'm not going to re tell the story here. If you have read the books you know how it goes.

I will say this, even though it has been a long time since I read the books, this movie, I think, was the closest representation of them. It stuck fairly close to the story I remembered.

The love triangle between Edward (Robert Pattinson), Bella (Kristen Stewart), and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) was handled very well and made for some comical as well as some steamy scenes. Girls, Jacob runs around half-naked again through most of the movie, even when there was no need for him to be half-naked. Lots of eye candy there. The first kiss between Bella and Jacob, ending in her breaking her hand on his face, was a well done scene that had the audience practically falling out of their seats as they laughed. The "passing off" scene between Edward and Jacob was pretty entertaining. She goes from one hot kiss from Edward, to a half-naked Jacob who wraps her in his warm arms. The look on Edwards face was hilarious. I really enjoyed the love triangle scenes.

There were some great one-liners in there too. Jacob telling Edward he was "hotter" than him, while keeping Bella from freezing to death, got a roar of laughter from the audience!

They touched a bit on the fact that Bella is dying to sleep with Edward and while that scene left the crowd with their own set of blue balls, the scene where Charlie and Bella attempt to discuss the "birds and bee's" gave us yet another scene to laugh at.


There were, of course some issues that bothered me.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but the characters just didn't look "right" to me. Some of the characters just didn't look like themselves even though I am sure they were all the same actors from the previous movies.  The eyes were overdone again. The obvious brilliant red or gold contact lenses were annoying to look at. The skin tone was way off too. I get it, their supposed to be vampires and very pale, but these guys had almost an alien-grey tone to them that made them look very freaky. The terrible wigs were back again and, if I am not mistaken, Kristen Stewart was wearing one this time around. Her hair looked very odd to me. It was much darker and almost frizzy compared to how it looked in other movies. 

Another thing that bothered me was the odd sound effects. When a vampire was killed they sounded like breaking glass. Now I understand that they are supposed to have skin as hard as marble, as stated in the books, but that sound effect really irked me. During the battle scenes it was everywhere. Also when they had limbs removed their insides were silvery as if like ice. I am not sure why they chose to represent them like that but it really took me out of the scene as I was trying to figure it out.

The battle scenes were kind of cool, but they were too quick to really appreciate. I'm not a big action buff so I'll leave comments to the audience on that one. Suffice to say I liked the wolves and they did a fair amount of vampire shredding. In-fact, I think they were the only ones who got to bite anyone. Again I say it ... This is a vampire flick. Let me see someone get bitten by a vampire. Sheesh!

Over-all I really enjoyed this movie and felt it was the best, so far, of the book-to-movie adaptations.