Twilight: Eclipse

My tweener son got me sucked into the reading the Twilight series of books.  I had to catch up and pass him so I could determine whether or not I thought the later books were suitable for him. 

There was entirely too much teenage emotional drama and angst for my taste but the author did manage to move the story line along at a pace that kept me engaged in the story if not the whole relationship turmoil of the book. 

Neither Edward or Jacob really floats my boat although I do have an ever-so-slight preference for Jacob since he seems to wear his emotions on his sleeve which I find endearing not to mention a killer set of abs.  I, however, am not your average teen aged girl.  Of course Bella is absurdly drawn to the emotionally reserved Edward. Duh.

The first installment of the movie was out of the theaters before I read the books.  Just before the second movie was released I watched the first movie.  I found it to be an epic waste of time.  The second movie, in contrast, I thought was well done.  There was actually a budget for special effects and they were quite effective at increasing the impact of the movie.

Last night several of my neighbors and I went to see the latest release, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.  While I found it entertaining and quite well written - all of the pertinent plot points were addressed in succinct, if somewhat choppy, scenes - I found the overuse of extreme closeups of the principle deadpan actors to be dull and not the last bit compelling.  The action scenes really made the movie for me.

During the ride home we discussed several shortcomings of the movie.  We all agreed that the casting of Edward was an epic failure.  I'm sorry but that boy has absolutely no skills and zero charisma.  The same goes for Bella.  All of the aforementioned extreme closeups really did nothing for this movie since neither of them can convey any emotion whatsoever.  Her puckered upper lip trembled in exactly the same way IN EVERY DAYUM SCENE.  BO-RING.

Random thoughts:

• I had and still have no empathy for Rosalie's character. 
  
• Jasper really came into his own during his backstory and the training scenes. 
  
• Alice is so friggin adorable and charming; I could watch her all day. 
  
• Whoever chose Carlisle's hair color should be fired - it totally distracts from every scene he is in.  
• That Jacob boy has some seriously nice abs.  We all wished he was older and lived in our neighborhood.
• With the exception of Bella (whose eyebrows are overplucked) everybody's eyebrows where overgrown to distraction.
  
• Bella's skinny jeans prove that even skinny people look like shit in them. I LOL'd when she tried to run up the hill but could only waddle.

Oddly, my son has no desire to see the movies.  He told me that they would ruin the books for him since he already had the images of the story in his mind the way he wanted them.  Kudos to him for being able to realize this at his age.  While I have seen the first three movies, I'm not inclined to watch the next installment since, having read the book, I can't imagine any way they could depict particular key moments that would not be wholly inadequate compared to the way the scenes play out in my mind.