THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE (USA/12A/124mins)
Directed by David Slade. Starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Dakota Fanning, Bryce Dallas Howard, Peter Facinelli.
THE PLOT: The teenage wildlife is getting that little bit wilder, as torn-between-two-mythical-freaks Bella (Stewart) finally has to decide whether she wants shy, pale kids or hairy little critters who cock their right leg when they pee. The hardcore fans – the many, many millions of them – will already know whether Bella decides to walk down the aisle with neck-biter Edward (Pattinson) or moon-howler Jake (Lautner), but director David Slade (who already dealt with some difficult teenage lust in 2005’s Hard Candy and made one of the better recent vampire flicks in 2007’s 30 Days Of Night) manages to conjure up enough heat and bloodlust to make you actually care about this mixed-up little goth and her two goofball suitors.
THE VERDICT: Having already broken a few opening weekend records in the US last week, the Twilight saga is a phenomenon that nonetheless suffers greatly from the fact that Meyer is no literary genius. She’s not even Rowling. She’s Dan Brown in a dress, and her thinly-veiled stab at making life as a Mormon seem cool (they don’t believe in sex before marriage, hence the dilemma for Edward and Bella consummating their lust) touches on the universal longing in all young would-be lovers. There’s no fruit quite as sweet as forbidden fruit.
This may be the best of the three films so far, but new and improved doesn’t mean that the Twilight juggernaut is yet a franchise that deserves anything like the success it’s had. It’s The Da Vinci Code for impressionable, depressed tweenies, and will ultimately prove to be far more Monkees than Beatles when its time has passed. RATING: ***
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