Twilight

Stephenie Meyer's best-selling Twilight novels, a series of teen fantasies in which vampires and mortals live side by side, have become one of the biggest publishing phenomena since Harry Potter.

In August this year across the Atlantic, a high profile midnight release for the fourth book in the saga, Breaking Dawn, resulted in an incredible 1.3 million copies flying off shelves in the first 24 hours.

Needless to say, with such a sizeable and loyal fanbase, Catherine Hardwicke's film, adapted for the screen by Melissa Rosenberg, was always going to be a licence to print money.

So it comes as a pleasant surprise that despite many flaws, including a stilted dialogue and a generous grating of cheesiness, Twilight is an entertaining and sprightly romantic yarn.

The occasional zinging one-liner ('Your mood swings are giving me whiplash') compensates for gushing and terrible earnest declarations of love, which suggest some of the characters in Meyer's imaginary world spend too much time with their noses in their parents' Mills & Boon.

Special effects are convincing without ever being dazzling and handsome leads Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson stare at one another with such intensity, it's hard not to be swept up in their characters' ill fated romance.

The story centres on teenage misfit Bella Swan (Stewart), who moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her cop father, Charlie (Billy Burke).

As the mysterious new girl at school, Bella soon makes friends but the only person she wants to meet is alluring outsider Edward Cullen (Pattinson).

In the parking lot one day, Bella is almost crushed to death in a freak traffic accident, only to be saved in the nick of time by Edward.

'Are you going to tell me how you stopped the van?' she asks him, referring to his superhuman strength.

'A rush of adrenaline,' he offers.

'It's really common, you can Google it.' Edward eventually reveals that he is a vampire - an immortal - but unlike many of his kind, he does not drink human blood.

When bloodthirsty predators Laurent (Ed Gathegi), James (Cam Gigandet) and Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre) begin to feed on the unsuspecting Forks locals, the Cullens close ranks to protect Bella from her immortal pursuers.

Twilight holds its target audience spellbound as Bella and Edward spend the first hour orbiting one another before succumbing to their desires, including a laughable love scene which sees the pair lying side by side in lush grass, staring dreamily into space.

Violence takes place predominantly off screen until a fast-paced finale, during which the fake claret runneth over and fangs are bared.

Pattinson looks far too old to pass for 17 (deathly pale make-up cannot hide his stubble) but he generates smouldering screen chemistry with Stewart, who perfectly embodies her heroine's pluck and naivete.

A subplot involving family friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and his American Indian tribe poses tantalising questions for subsequent films.

• Release Date: Friday 19 December 2008

• Certificate: 12A

• Runtime: 121mins