New Moon Review

Ah, yes. The second Twilight movie. The film that makes fangirls (not just the girls) scream and critics sigh. I may be a critic, but fortunately for me, I have a fangirl for a sister, so I get a rare treat into the realm of the fanpires! Also, I went to the midnight release and took part in the festivities of waiting in line. But enough about my adventures, lets get into the movie.

Last year, the release of Twilight created a shitstorm of shrill screams from fans across EVARYWARE EVAR!!!!!!!! I jest, but it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Sure it was corny, and the whole mythos pisses me the fuck off, but it wasn't bad. It was okay.

The sequel isn't as lucky though.

New Moon picks up pretty much right from where the last movie ended. The heroine Bella (Kristin Stewart) is starting her senior year of high school, and her life with Edward the vampire (Robert Pattinson) has been going pretty well. She's been accepted into the Cullen's vampire clan and everything is working out. But all of this goes to hell soon. While celebrating her birthday at the Cullen's, Bella gets a paper cut as she unwraps one of her gifts. She's now in a room full of hungry vampires and she's bleeding. This creates a bit of a dangerous situation and Edward decides he must leave forever for Bella's own good. Bella is left alone and depressed, and she eventually takes to thrill-seeking. The reason behind this is that every time she is doing something dangerous, she sees a vision of Edward imparting safety knowledge to her. It's like Sonic Says, except with more teen angst.

So Bella is sad but she soon finds a good friend in Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Bella begins to find solace in Jacob, but then he starts going through some changes. He's now a guy full of RAGE and pretty much ditches Bella to hang with some shirtless-guy-cult. We find out that he is actually part of a family that turns into sharks, I mean wolves and is basically going through wolf-puberty. The drama continues!

Oh, and also, Edward decides that he can't live without Bella, so he plans on revealing himself as a vampire to the people of Italy, I guess, so that the Volturi, who are vampire royalty, are forced to execute him, because that's their thing.

So that's enough about the plot details. Now to get into the opinions.

I can really only think about this movie critically by comparing it to the last one. Twilight was overall not a bad movie. Not great, but definitely watchable. In fact, I've probably seen it about eight times now (thanks again to my sister) and it does grow on you, in a very weird way. The directing is pretty good, the acting is, meh, alright, the writing is okay and the effects are a huge laugh. I'll watch it. New Moon on the other hand is just worse in pretty much every way except for the effects, which from my point of view doesn't count for much. They replaced Catherine Hardwicke, the former director, and brought in Chris Weitz. What Hardwicke accomplished, Weitz fails at, and, in Lautner's case, makes him constantly remove his shirt. Weitz just puts Bella and Edward into scenes and then calls it a day. There is no feeling in it. Melissa Rosenberg returns to write the script, which I hear is pretty much a direct adaptation of the novel (not that that means its good or anything) so I can only pin the blame on the director. Hardwicke got it to work well enough, and Weitz just didn't. Maybe he should go back to directing talking polar bears instead.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson both try their damnedest to battle the black hole that swallows the life of the film, but both fail in the end. Taylor Lautner is a little better only because he’s the one character out of the three mains who doesn't spend all of his screen-time being depressed. He also gets the best material. Still, its a lost cause. Michel Sheen and Dakota Fanning bring a little more flavor into it, but their parts are so small (basically cameos) that it really doesn't even make a difference. I will say though that Sheen kinda reminded me of Mark Hamil's Joker in some scenes. Weird, eh?

New Moon is definitely more sparkly (haha) than Twilight, but only because they were treated to a much larger budget. What Twilight got right, New Moon got wrong. The film misses the core ideas that should have been the guiding light of the movie, leaving you wishing you could just watch the original again afterward. I can only hope that the next movie, Eclipse, is better. Directing now is David Slade, who has horror film experience form Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night. The latter being, OMG, a vampire movie. Can I hope? Perhaps.