I haven’t read the books yet, but I went to see Twilight today and dragged my husband and sons along. My kids were familiar with the basic story because all the girls (and a few boys) at their school are reading the series. They liked the movie but aren’t sure they’ll start reading the books. I think they were secretly hoping the movie would be awful so they could make fun of it at school.
I used to be an advocate of always reading the book before seeing the movie adaptation, but that is slowly changing. Earlier this year I wanted to just enjoy the latter two Harry Potter movies just for the movies themselves so I watched The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix before reading the books, and I was glad I did. I’ll probably be glad I did in this case as well.
My thoughts on the movie without having read the book:
First, I always think it’s cool when the author (or director) has a cameo. I was glad I saw Stephenie Meyer’s scene. I didn’t even know about it before hand, but of course, I knew what she looked like, so I was able to tell my kids who she was when she came on screen.
I thought the acting was okay but not stellar. Some of it was shaky in spots. I did like Bella’s dad. He was great.
I didn’t think James was scary enough.
I thought the baseball scene was cool.
Overall, I liked it, and I’m happy for Stephenie Meyer as this looks like it’ll be a successful movie series as well. I’ll be reading at least the first two books of the series, probably next year.
