Singapore has a lot of cinemas that show a lot of different movies at a time, unlike in Metro Manila wherein Greenbelt may show the same movie in all 6 of its cinemas.
Still, Singapore cinemas lose to Manila’s in that their Hollywood movies are shown late. Take Twilight, for example, which the rest of the world had already seen and moved on from by the time it made its way to the Sing big screen a month later.
Last night was our time to watch one of the most popular movies of the year, in a very small cinema in Cathay Cineleisure, Orchard. By “small” I mean it had only about 80 seats.
I had read the entire Twilight series, so I had some expectations, on the way the characters, particularly the devastatingly beautiful Edward, were supposed to look.
When I first saw the trailer, I was mildly disappointed by their choice of actor for the leading man in the story. But last night when I sat back and watched him, I acknowledged that I had been too quick too judge him. The trailers had not shown his best asset – his smile. That said, I can also say that it was the only saving grace of the movie.
The movie was not a complete waste of time and money, but I would not want to watch it again and again, if you know what I mean. It had an interesting plot, but it was not acted out well. The intensity of Bella’s and Edward’s feelings for each other were not well established, thus it was kind of hard to swallow what happened in the movie’s climax. I found myself thinking, why is Edward risking his family’s and his own life for this girl?
Aside from that, it was also not well established just how hard it was for Edward to resist Bella’s smell. I’m not just saying this because I read the book. These two are the critical central aspects of the entire plot and they should have been done well for the movie to make its point. And it completely missed the point.
Meyer’s writing was mediocre enough, but Hardwicke’s direction of the movie was more disappointing. They are lucky that kilig factor trumps all other aspects of any story, hands down. I guess this explains all the hype.