Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Star cast:Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Plot: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson plan to get married. While Stewart wants to turn into a vampire, Robert is hesitant. Taylor Lautner is also in love with Kristen. So when the rogue vampire tries to kill her for revenge, the vampires and werewolves get together.

What’s Good: A cute Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner’s Salman Khan act.

What’s Bad: The dialogues, the bad script and Kristen Stewart’s intermittent face-twitching.

Verdict: The film leaves a bad taste in your mouth unless you are a Twilight fan. Thumbs down.

Loo break: Several, especially when the supposedly mushy dialogues are being mouthed.

Summit Entertainment’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the third film in the Twilight series, based on the novel Eclipse by Stephenie Mayer. For the uninitiated, the franchise is a typical teen love romance, with a fantastical twist.

Edward doesn’t want Bella to be a vampire, so he disappears.

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the cause of a friction between a young vampire, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a young werewolf, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner); both of them adore her to death. On top of it, their respective tribes, the Vampires and Werewolves don’t see eye-to-eye as they are natural enemies. Bella loves Edward, but Jacob insists that he’ll be able to take care of her better than the “dead, cold-blooded” Edward. Despite being confused, Bella decides to complete her love for Edward by getting herself bitten by him and joining the vampires. Edward doesn’t want Bella to be a vampire, so he disappears.

This is where Eclipse begins, tying to tie up all the loose strings that the earlier two prequels (Twilight and New Moon) had left behind. Bella finds herself surrounded by danger as a rogue vampire, Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), raises an army of newborn vampires to kill Bella for seeking revenge for the death of her partner, who was killed by Edward in the last film. In the midst of it all, Bella is forced to choose between Edward and Jacob – knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the struggle between the vampires and werewolves. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella is confronted with the most important decision of her life. Will she choose Edward? Or Jacob? Will the vampires and werewolves make peace? The rest of the film answers these questions.

Robert Pattinson, as the undead Edward, and Taylor Lautner, as the lusty Jacob, do good jobs.

The problem with Eclipse is that unless you are a teenager, a Twilight fan who has read the books, or just love the handsome young Robert Pattinson, you won’t give much importance to what happens. What puts the film down is a shoddy effort at eliciting any juice from the script. Melissa Rosenberg’s screenplay is drab and slow; there are no twists and turns to startle the viewer. Even the visual effects of the film, which could have done a lot of good otherwise, are just okay. The audience simply waits for the action to begin, when the love birds fall into another round of mushy talk. The dialogues aren’t memorable enough.

Robert Pattinson, as the undead Edward, and Taylor Lautner, as the lusty Jacob, do good jobs. Kristen Stewart, however, looks as if her face was frozen in time from the ‘woe is me’ teen in the first movie.  She still seems unhappy as ever even with the two most deadly men in town hanging on her every (uninteresting) word. But just like Harry Potter, this starlet will sail through the entire saga just blinking through the scenes. The rest of the cast does a fair job.

David Slade’s direction is average. He has done some good work (30 Days Of Night, Hard Candy) but fails in elevating Eclipse even a notch higher than the prequels. The music (by Howard Shore) is average. Cinematography (Javier Aguirresarobe) is the saving grace of the film at times, as the eyes wander to the beautiful visuals in the boring scenes.

The film makes no bones about the fact that it’s a staple for love-sick teenagers.

All in all, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse disappoints. The film makes no bones about the fact that it’s a staple for love-sick teenagers who will put up Edward-Bella-Jacob quotes on their Facebook/Twitter updates and coo over them. Sample this: Half way into the film, Bella is bent on having sex with Edward, but he’s old-fashioned and wants to wait till they are married. Jacob puts up some serious competition to Edward and when he tells Edward, “Well, I’m hotter than you,” you know there are dozens of teenage girls out there, nodding in approval. For the rest, the film is a massive downer.

– By Mrigank Dhaniwala