Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner. Rated PG. Opens Wednesday, June 30.

Given the proliferation of vampire-themed novels, movies, and television series over the last couple of years, it is evident that prodigiously successful (and curiously spelled) author Stephenie Meyer has cast the entertainment world in Twilight.

Based on your immersion in that world, you’re either going to see the Eclipse film or not. You already know that it is about human girl Bella’s chaste yet kinkily polyandrous and extra-species romances with a vampire and a shape-shifting wolf boy; or you’re not the type that wastes your life reading commoners’ piffle.

Consequently, a review will only serve to kick off a conversation about whether this one lived up to your expectations.

I found Eclipse to be a pleasant surprise, bringing genuine tension, fuller character development of the secondary characters, and a few welcome laughs to a series that has threatened at times to disappear into its own navel with dourness. Of course, the source novel was the leanest, most action-filled of the series, a gift upon which director David Slade has grafted some impressive fight scenes and slick effects (the slickest being Taylor Lautner’s eight-pack). At times it almost seems like a real movie experience, rather than the fulfillment of an investment in a multimedia juggernaut. This is not a cheap shot; it seemed difficult to envision Bella and Edward as anything but sullen Kristen Stewart and genial Robert Pattinson on yet another magazine cover. In Eclipse, they get enough time between frenetic vampire attacks to actually advance their romance beyond cow-eyed moonings (although fans of cow-eyed mooning are not ill-served). I found them to be somewhat plausible characters, and still the gold standard in pasty goth sex symbols.