'Twilight' has finally opened. After all the hype and speculation, fueled by a flurry of marketing campaigns as well and fan adulation in print and on the web, the vampire love story that has captured the fancy of teens and young adults worldwide finally opens in hundreds of movie theaters around the world. It will be a monster hit, that's for sure. The interest in the movie leading up to its release made sure of that. Moreover, the lucrative Thanksgiving weekend opening, inherited from the sixth edition of Harry Potter (The Half Blood Prince), almost guarantees its success at the box office.

But what do the reviews say? Do critics like the 'Twilight' movie or did they pan this modern day vampire love story as one of the forgettable films of the season? This is quite important for a movie like 'Twilight', mind you, as non-Twilight fans will surely wait for favorable reviews of the movie before they watch it. Ticket sales from the film's
fanatics are already a lock at this point but there are millions of other curious fan out there. Much like undecided voters in an election, they usually wait for the reviews to come out before finally deciding to see a movie.

Several reviews are now available online, and for the most part, critics aren't impressed. They unanimously concede that the movie's target audience - the teens and young female adults - will thoroughly enjoy the film. But for the uninitiated, consensus so far seems to be that it's a ho-hum film that will leave audiences unimpressed. Here are some of them:

Twilight Review from Entertainment Weekly
"[Director Catherine Hardwicke] has reconjured Meyer's novel as a cloudburst mood piece filled with stormy skies, rippling hormones, and understated visual effects. What Hardwicke can't quite triumph over is the book's lackluster plot. On screen, Twilight is repetitive and a tad sodden, too prosaic to really soar. But Hardwicke stirs this teen pulp to a pleasing simmer.” - Owen Gleiberman

Twilight Review from Variety
"A disappointingly anemic tale of forbidden love that should satiate the pre-converted but will bewilder and underwhelm viewers who haven't devoured Stephenie Meyer's bestselling juvie chick-lit franchise." - Justin Chang

Twilight Review from The Orlando Sentinel
"The situations, in high school and among the vampires, are over-familiar. But the dialogue is mostly flip and hip. Some of the laughs are intentional, some not. A vampire using the word 'vegetarian?' Funny." - Roger Moore

Twilight Review from The Associated Press
"But much of what made the relationship between Edward and the smitten Bella Swan work in Meyer's breezy book has been stripped away on screen. The funny, lively banter - the way in which Edward and Bella teased and toyed with one another about their respective immortality and humanity - is pretty much completely gone, and all that's left is a slog of adolescent angst." - Christy Lemire

Twilight Review from The Chicago Tribune
"Twilight is a film of intelligent strengths and easily avoidable weaknesses, a modest film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's publishing phenomenon. It is faithful to its source material, which will likely please the fan base.... So where does the movie fall down? On a simple but crucial matter of visual magic. Whenever something fantastic requires straightforward on-screen depiction, Twilight looks like a weaker episode from Season 6 of Charmed." - Michael Phillips

Twilight Review from Emanuel Levy
"Like other movies that are more significant as sociological and demographic than artistic phenomenon, Twilight will be embraced by very young female viewers, say ages 10-17, and less so by the female college crowd. If young femmes manage to take their boyfriends to see it as a date movie (and on one level it is a date movie), Twilight should score big, really big at the box office."

Twilight Review from Roger Ebert
"If there were no vampires in Twilight, it would be a thin-blooded teenage romance, about two good-looking kids who want each other so much because they want each other so much. Sometimes that's all it's about, isn't it?"

watch the 'Twilight' movie official trailer

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