Twilight Saga: Eclipse Review – Boring Ménage à Trois
And all ye schmucks thought bad movies have their origins only in the Kollywood sewers or the talentless, thieving Bollywood yokels.
Ha ha, shows how little you twits know.
Here Comes the Eclipse
With the frenzy of the new the Twilight movie Eclipse nigh upon us, we were curious as hell to see what the hullabaloo and the shrieks and the excitement was all about.
So we braved the scorching mid-Atlantic heat yesterday and headed to our neighboring RedBox movie rental kiosk for the $1 DVD of The Twilight Saga – New Moon, the previous installment in the Twilight saga.
Absolute Nonsense
We never thought we’d say this but even an Abhishek Bachchan movie is a gazillion times better than this New Moon rubbish.
Really.
Our utter disappointment with the film may partially be attributed to the absence of a strong notion of werewolves and vampires in the Indian popular culture.
Werewolves and vampires are a Western, if not completely American, thing and it’s hard for an Indian mind to get a hard-on over films featuring them. If you want an analogy, it’s kinda like the Hindu monkeys in India jumping up and down over the Ramayan TV series in the 1980s. The empty, silent roads on Sunday mornings when the Ramayan aired must have been pretty baffling to all others.
That said, even a film with vampires and werewolves may perhaps be made somewhat appealing to non-American viewers, albeit to a much lesser degree than with Americans, with an interesting, gripping story.
What Story?
Alas, a decent, interesting story is precisely what Twilight Saga – New Moon most definitely lacks.
In its essence, Twilight Saga – New Moon is the boring, horribly written account of a 18-year-old girl loved by both a vampire and a werewolf and her obsessive love for one of them.
A love that takes a weird form after she gets jilted by the one she loves.
Folks, that’s all there’s to this 130-minute junk.
The rest of the movie is mere fluff.
Driving around in the pickup, the school, the visit to the movie, the boys cliff-diving into the water and other frivolous stuff.
As with our Bollywood films, love in Twilight Saga – New Moon is so center-stage that there’s little room for anything else. The perfect recipe for a boring film.
Mediocre Acting
Bella Swan, the young girl, is played by Kristen Stewart; the pale-faced vampire character Edward Cullen by Robert Pattinson and the werewolf Jacob Black by the shirtless, rippling biceps endowed Taylor Lautner.
We didn’t think any of them did a stellar job.
Really, would it have made a difference even had they done a stupendous job given the crappy story.
In the emoting department, Kristen Stewart was the worst.
Think of Kristen Stewart as the Hollywood version of that Bollywood clown Priyanka Chopra or that South Indian nightmare Trisha Krishnan.
The overwhelming passion that Bella supposedly feels (remember the body-wracking sobs in the middle of the night that has her father worried) for her lover just doesn’t flow through on the screen.
Fair to say the girl is like a zombie.
A Yawn
As for the computer graphics of the wolves and their occasional fights, they were alright but nothing that’d make you go ‘wow.’
The photography of some of the scenes in the woods was pleasing.
But overall, the movie is a yawn.
Make that a lengthy, dragging yawn.
Not worth even the $1 we paid to rent the RedBox DVD. 🙁
Baby, Crap Sells Everywhere
And to all those who are agitated over the huge openings for our crappy Bollywood films, we say – Take Heart. New Moon is said to have grossed $72.7 million on its opening day in the U.S., the biggest single-day opening in America, ahead of even The Dark Knight ($67.2 million).
Who said we have schmucks only in India.
Related Stories:
Twilight Saga: Eclipse Review – Boring Ménage à Trois
The Twilight Saga: New Moon Review – Stupid Shit added by SearchIndia.com on
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Twilight Novels are decent though not great. I read Twilight (First one) and it’s good (teenage stuff).
I saw the movie but it was trash. All the scenes / characters which seemed plausible in the novel are not developed well in the movie.
Movie was very boring too.
I heard eclipse is best of all the four novels with lot of action.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: I saw the movie but it was trash.
But this trash is making a lot of money. It should be releasing in your city too.
Do you plan to see Eclipse tomorrow?
Wonder if the Twilight movies are big in India.
No. I am not planning to see it.
This may seem silly but the actual reason for me to read twilight books when I have other all time great novels pending is http://www.amazon.com/Defining-Twilight-Vocabulary-Workbook-Unlocking/dp/0470507438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277841891&sr=1-1
SearchIndia.com Responds:
The link is not loading now but we know what you are referring to – Boost your vocabulary, eh?
yup.
i thought first movie of twilight was good,after i saw the second one it was very boring and ridiculous,it is interesting that you are reviewing boring twilight movies instead better and superior harry potter movies?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Will see our first ‘Hari Puttar’ movies too soon.
First movie was good? OMG! I couldn’t tolerate two things after seeing the movie.
1) Movie being bad
2) People going gaga over it and being in the news for several centuries, every second.
WTF? I think Indian directors can make better movies than that.
but then who will get Kirsten Stewart (Holy Crap, she is stunning) and Robert Pattinson ( girls, am I right?) ?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Bad taste, it seems, is universal. 😉
Have you read the “Harry Potter” series? THE GREATEST series of books ever written, if you count the entertainment value alone. No high-brow literature but splendidly narrated. I’ve read a reasonably wide range of books, but nothing even comes close to Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings has more grandeur but Harry Potter is simply much more…what shall I say? Breathtaking, fascinating, thrilling. All of them would fit in. Somehow, the Harry Potter movies never quite appealed to me like the books did. Pale shadows, they are. All of them manage to mess up the flavour of the books in one aspect or the other.
But the books… They are a class apart. The mind boggles to contemplate Rowling’s feats of imagination and story-telling skills.
off-topic:
Saw Raavanan.
Vikram is superb, Aishwarya somehow manages to look ugly (like some squashed up sponge) all the time. Between perfecting all the bak-bak-bak and the dan-danakka, dan-danakka(T.Rajendher inspiration, I guess 😉 ) of Vikram and showing shitty close-ups of Aishwarya Rai every third second, Maniratnam clean forgot to bring a script to the shooting spot. And thus, we have this shallow, shitty Magnum Flopus called Raavanan.
BTW, the first half of Raavanan was one of those weird films where the characters are all moving at a fiery pace, bustling about with great vigour and all that with a good deal of shouting and screaming, and yet very little actually takes place.
And for a supposedly “subtle” director, this Maniratnam ass kept drilling every single bit of Ramayan reference into our heads. For God’s sake, did Karthik have to literally keep jumping from tree to tree, Vikram keep repeating till we pleaded for mercy that “my nickname is Raavanan”, “I have ten heads” and so forth. Bloody amateurish shit. The art of Maniratnam has long fallen into rot. Now it’s all gimmickry and fizz.
And for heavens’ sake, can some fan-boys stop the bull-shitting w.r.t the scenery and back-drop et al? You can get that in a picture post-card for a pittance.(With the added attraction of not having that clueless grandma Aishwarya Rai blot your viewing experience 😉 ).
P.S. Come on, how long will you be ruminating about your 7G experience? If you could at least set a proper deadline for yourself (that you would then stick to) while reviewing old films, it would be a boon for your readers.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write: And for heavens’ sake, can some fan-boys stop the bull-shitting w.r.t the scenery and back-drop et al? You can get that in a picture post-card for a pittance.
Wins the comment of the month award. 😉
2. No, we haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books.
We’re going to the library to pick up Peter Carey’s His Illegal Self later today. Let’s see if they have Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first in the seven-volume series.
3. Karthik was most unimpressive.
Govinda, a fella we loath with gusto, did a superior job in the Hindi version.
4. 7G? We’ll get to it.
care for a spoof?, Try Arnold’s ‘Last Action Hero’ ,Had seen it when released but couldnt really get the satire. Caught it on TV recently, must say really enjoyed it.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Last Action Hero looks interesting going by the intro we read on Wiki.
You are probably going to be swarmed by angry 16 year old girls… that’s probably not a bad thing.
Kristen Stewart squirms, rarely makes eye contact, mumbles during interviews.. more like an awkward teenager (she is not even a teen anymore) than like a movie star who makes 2 mil. a movie.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: You are probably going to be swarmed by angry 16 year old girls… that’s probably not a bad thing.
When New Moon released last November, there was a special huge tent outside the multiplex highlighting the movie and perhaps even peddling some trinkets associated with the film. Never seen anything like that for any other film here.
“Werewolves and vampires are a Western, if not completely American, thing and it’s hard for an Indian mind to get a hard-on over films featuring them.”
I think you’re exaggerating the culture-shock factor a little too much. Movies like Van Helsing did amazingly well in Tamil Nadu(and I think, the whole of India as well). I should know ’cause I watched Van Helsing when it was celebrating its 50th day at a nearby theatre just to see what the fuss was all about. Other than that, movies like Underworld and Predator did decently in a few movie-halls here, so I don’t think there’s too much to read in that.
If a film’s good, it’s good. If it’s a bad film, no amount of cultural familiarity can change that.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You Write Above: If a film’s good, it’s good. If it’s a bad film, no amount of cultural familiarity can change that.
No can agree.
Culture has cast its root deep into the psyche of the moviegoer though a few films manage to transcend the prejudice against the unfamiliar.
For instance, Indian movies without five songs would be a hard-sell in Mera Bharat Mahaan, a fact that never ceases to surprise our American friends.
Hollywood has a separate genre for such films – Musicals. Au contraire, in India all movies are musicals.
Also, Indians tend to be more averse to tragedies and usually prefer the numbing sedative of happy endings.
That point made, we may have exaggerated a wee bit. 😉
Strange that you watched this film and also a recent Tom Cruise flop;but not a couple of good films suggested by me? (Toy Story and Toy Story-3)
Yeah,they’re animation stuffs,but really good;I don’t generally like animation films much;but Toy Story trilogy is different and really very good-They’ve some really funny story-lines and exciting screenplay;you won’t regret watching them!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Will watch Toy Story definitely.