HOSTing a Letdown

Okay, I like Stephanie Meyer. 

In case you don't know who she is... Author... Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse... Breaking Dawn, and The Host!)

I really like the way she writes. Don't ask me how, but I see a connection. In some weird, odd, random and definitely CRAZY way I see a  bond! Enough said.

I love collecting things, be it movies, books, songs, pictures, and whatever else that catches my fancy. I am what I like to call an Eclectic LIBRARIAN of sorts. Ever since I was small, I dreamed of having a LIBRARY all to myself! Complete collection of all my favorite authors, actors, singers, musicians, from A to Z (arranged chronologically under different languages, and alphabetically, my Obsessive compulsive self can have it NO other way! Ahan!). Bless every single person who is willingly (or unwillingly) going to help me in this endeavor! You guys are BRILL!!

Clearly, all this won't happen overnight, so I have started my ''Collection" and as a part of this I brought the "THE HOST" right when I was bringing together the whole Twilight series. I didn't read it until much later, though, I was far too enamored by Edward and Bella to bother about it! But when I finally managed to read, I LOVED IT! I have read book at least five times since then. I can, in fact, tell you most of the conversations between the characters as well! Yep, I can!

So you can imagine my excitement when I heard of the movie coming out! But when I saw the lead actors, my enthusiasm dropped a couple of notches down. Then again I wanted to watch the movie to see how they would have shoot certain crucial scenes and how the whole chemistry between the two main characters (Melanie Stryder and Wanderer, One Body two minds) works out.

Disappointment is an understatement! Utter Failure! Poor adaption, bad casting, slow, silly, stupid and soporific. I cannot begin to express my utter frustration at such a lack luster product!

Maybe I am not in their target audience category, but trust me these tweens (who made Twilight a MASSIVE Success)  who are disillusioned with abandoned Victorian-style romanticism will NOT associate themselves to these completely unattractive star cast!

What I love about Stephanie is her quaintly archaic ideas on morality, old-fashioned love and emotional dilemmas of being stuck in between two cross species men. This time around, Meyer,  centered on a leading lady whose dual personality hinges on Body Snatchers like notion. Trouble is, the future depicted is created not by us, but by aliens (A race of aliens named Souls, small silvery beings who look like furry balls with tiny fiber-optic cables, who can survive only by colonizing other creatures and finding a Host! They crawl into the back of the necks and take over the body) who have taken over the planet and enslaved its human population.

They're not such bad fellows these souls: Considerate, always mindful of the common good, utterly peaceful, they transform the whole world into one big modern colony populated by Valium-ingesting Stepford Wives ( How i love that movie!). They wear immaculate white outfits and drive sleek sports cars. By comparison, the human survivors live savage, angry, sweaty, smelly lives.

Meyer's story poses several interesting questions about the nature of human identity (are we our minds or our bodies?) and that perennial cliché, Can humans cohabit without hatred and violence? But the pace is too apathetic, the characters too laid-back. And the WORST part, The Host isn't even good at the romance. There's not very much fervor, no zeal and NO passion on screen!!

Once inside a host, the Soul takes over, killing off the original personality. This is what happened with the Movie as well, it took over the Book and KILLED IT! (No, not in the way we SHOULD in the Gym... this is in the  BAD BAD Way!)