I have no idea why this movie is so panned. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve never particularly taken to either Lautner or Lily Collins to date, but I found them both personable in this. I wish Directors would let Lautner keep his clothes on though. We’re not all 13 year old “Team Jacob” ninnies you know, we can actually enjoy a well muscled man with his clothes on! Imagination people, it works wonders. Anyway, about the movie.

The premise is interesting, and I feel, fairly well carried out although I would have liked the movie to go another 15 or so minutes to really build the suspense more, I blame sloppy Direction for that. The actors all acquitted themselves well, but I’m getting a little weary at Mario Bello turning up all over the place as everyone’s mother. I’ve never forgiven her for her painful portrayal of Evie O’Connell in Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, her accent was like fingernails down a blackboard – that was a criminal piece of miscasting. Moving along, I think any problems with this movie lay completely in the lap of the direction-less Director and Writers who should have kept the script tighter. I’ve read other reviews that said there wasn’t enough action, I disagree. There was plenty of action, there was just more time spent on inconsequential’s than background to the story. I gave it 8 stars which is generous, normally I would have give a movie of this quality a 7, but it needs a boost from the 3 stars it’s currently sitting on. I actually think the cause of the resistance is in no small part because Taylor Lautner is in it. And not because he isn’t any good, it’s the Twi-cringe factor…. I’ll be very pleased when the whole Twilight franchise is over and buried so we can all forget it and judge the actors and their future roles on their own merits. It was fun at first, but now it’s just old. If Taylor Lautner can keep getting parts like this and do them as well as he did this one (those kicks were impressive) I’m sure he’ll be making movies into his 30s at least. If only he were taller! As for Lily Collins, I’m now looking forward to seeing her in Mortal Instruments, I just hope someone does something about those ghastly thick eyebrows of hers – they’re disturbing, and worse than that, distracting.