Twilight (2008)

The film succeeds by treating high school emotions with unwavering seriousness, making viewers wish they were romantic teens again. Hardwicke is credited with connecting intensely to the source novel and delivering an ideal version through strong casting and reverence for the material.

Hardwicke delivers a highly effective adaptation faithful to the novel with strong casting and atmospheric visuals that blend romance and mild horror for its target audience.

The critic finds the film a wildly enjoyable, unorthodox teen vampire romance that plays its outrageous story straight and is better acted than many relationship movies. It offers a sweetly idealistic charm as a satire on abstinence culture and high-school norms.

Hardwicke improves on the source novel with brisk pacing and visual beauty while delivering a faithful adaptation that understands its teen audience. It is a sometimes girly swirl of obsession that will delight fans and is after teenage blood at the box office.

The passionate, silly film equates the longings of first love with a gothic death cult in an un-ironic way. It is cheesy and corny but played with conviction by the young cast as if they could not care less what their parents thought.

The film is a deeply sincere, outright goofy vampire romance that faithfully adapts the book’s tale of teenage lovers amid hormones and high school drama. The critic praises Hardwicke’s eye for young performers and feel for their private worlds but notes shaky filmmaking and finds Pattinson’s Edward a bore.

Despite melodramatic foibles and goofy elements like dodgy effects and vampire baseball, the film manages to entertain as an unbridled fantasy for adolescent girls and a goofy comedy for others. The romance takes center stage over the thin plot involving rival vampires.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson share strong chemistry in this tale of a teenage girl falling for a vampire, though some dialogue is clunky; Hardwicke makes the gloom exotic.

The director grounds the supernatural hokum with earthy naturalism and takes the romance seriously without winking at the audience. Flaws include a lack of explanation for the central attraction and a blank heroine onto whom viewers can project themselves.

The adaptation delivers swoony tension between the leads amid misty mountains but remains too polite overall, with little real threat from the vampires.

The critic argues that the film's success is assured among teenage girls but faults director Catherine Hardwicke for making a movie that talks down to young people through excessive camp and repetitive staring scenes. Praise goes to the exquisite cinematography and design, plus the sensitive lead performances of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson when not hampered by the ornate direction.

The review pans the adaptation as a laughable, chaste gothic tweener romance full of hysterical nonsensicality and overly campy performances from the leads. It singles out for complaint the skeevy implication of an ancient vampire pursuing a high-school girl, likening the whole affair to a sex-free bodice-ripper aimed at a young audience.

The review sees the film as a giddy, hormone-driven romance that indulges teen melodrama and repressed love with striking gothic visuals. It singles out the quiet chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as the element that most excites the senses.

The film succeeds as an emotional, faithful adaptation of the goopy romance for its target audience of teen fans, even if mainstream critics dismiss it. Hardwicke stays true to the book while adding some levity, though certain added scenes and effects feel corny or rushed.

The critic admires the film's faithful rendering of high-school angst and romance but finds the central vampire love story implausible and the overall take on the mythos unengaging. He singles out Robert Pattinson's leaden performance and uneven pacing (strong early relationship focus, rushed finale) for complaint.

The critic finds the film ridiculous and often epically, hilariously awful in its departures from traditional vampire lore, yet concedes it is not entirely without merit. She singles out the script's reasonably flowing adaptation and Hardwicke's extraction of decent-to-fine performances plus strong Oregon cinematography for limited praise.

The critic finds the film bland, predictable and mushy, with terrible acting, script and direction that fails to show off any skills. The only positive note is its capture of the overcast Pacific Northwest landscape.