'Twilight: Eclipse': Lukewarm reviews from the critics

"Twilight: Eclipse" opens June 30 and is looking to earn big bucks from the legions of Twihards across the country and around the world. But what do the critics think?

Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times: For most of its languorous running time, it listens to conversations between Bella and Edward, Bella and Jacob, Edward and Jacob, and Edward and Bella and Jacob. This would play better if any of them were clever conversationalists, but their ideas are limited to simplistic renderings of their desires

Betsy Sharkey, the Los Angeles Times: Actors breathe life into characters, and the new director keeps things moving in the new installment of the vampire-werewolf saga ... "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" is back with all of the lethal and loving bite it was meant to have: The kiss of the vampire is cooler, the werewolf is hotter, the battles are bigger and the choices are, as everyone with a pulse knows by now, life-changing.

A.O. Scott, the New York Times: If there is a bit more humor on display here -- some of it evidence that an element of self-conscious self-mockery is sneaking into the franchise -- there is also more violence, and, true to the film's title, a deeper intimation of darkness. What there isn't, as usual, is much in the way of good acting, with the decisive and impressive exception of Ms. Stewart, who can carry a close-up about as well as anyone in movies today. Mr. Lautner still seems to have recently escaped from a high school cheerleading squad somewhere, and Mr. Pattinson's pout conveys not the existential angst of a lovelorn immortal, but rather the peevishness of a guy who just lost a Great Garbo lookalike contest -- for the third time in a row! -- to his own girlfriend.

Peter Debruge, Variety: The pleasant surprise this time around is that the result finally feels more like the blockbuster this top-earning franchise deserves. Employing a bigger budget, better effects and an edgier director ("Hard Candy's" David Slade), "Eclipse" focuses on what works -- the stars -- even as the series' parent-friendly abstinence message begins to unravel.

David Germain, Associated Press: With returning screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg delivering her sharpest adaptation yet, Slade keeps the rather episodic story moving at a good clip, though things still bog down often enough in the same old routine. Bella begging Edward to turn her into a vampire, Jacob pleading with Bella to fall for him, Edward snarling at Jacob to stay away from his woman, Jacob snarling back. The stars remain a boring threesome, Stewart limping through supposedly impassioned speeches as though Bella already were one of the cold-blooded undead. Pattinson and Lautner at least have perfected their shallow mugging and one-upping, and they're clearly having fun as Edward and Jacob try to out-sneer each other.

E! Online gives it a C: In director David Slade's hands, the story plays like two movies in one, neither being particularly well made, whether it's the would-be action horror of a brewing vampire-on-werewolf fight or the endlessly talky Bella-Edward torpor.

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: t took three films, but "The Twilight Saga" finally nails just the right tone in "Eclipse," a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

Hitfix's Drew McWeeny: Sure, this film is staged with more energy than the previous one, but it is just as dramatically inert, and it is filled with just as many infuriating character decisions and just as much disturbing psychosexual subtext as "New Moon."  And even more maddening, if you were to take the first scene of the film and the last scene of the film and set them side by side, cutting everything in between, there is no difference in where Edward and Bella find themselves.  The entire film is just marking time between the second and the fourth film.

Access Hollywood's MovieMantz: Well, the good news is that the third chapter of the "Twilight" saga, "Eclipse," is better than the first two movies. The bad news is, not by much ... But despite the best efforts of David Slade ("Hard Candy," "30 Days of Night") - the third "Twilight" director in as many films, after Catherine Hardwicke and Chris Weitz - "Eclipse" is still bogged down by the poor plotting, slow pacing and sub-par acting that has, sadly, marred the film series all along.


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Photo credit: Summit Entertainment