New Moon

As I mentioned at the end of my review of the first chapter of the Twilight saga, in spite of its low quality I resolved to check out the following movies in the series because of the enormous success they’ve enjoyed and to see if it was justified.

After watching chapter two, New Moon, the answer is still, unarguably, no.

Synopsis: with Edward and his clan gone, Bella spends her time pining for him and tempting fate in order to possibly force his return.  Meanwhile, her childhood friend Jacob is all grown up and courting her attention now that he sees an opening.  Victoria, whose boyfriend Edward killed at the end of Twilight when he tried to kill Bella, is back though, seeking revenge on Bella herself.  Jacob and his pack of wolves might now be Bella’s only defense against her.

The worst thing about New Moon, once again, is the screenplay.  I really wonder how the books are written, because if they’re as bad as these scripts, I can’t understand how they managed to sell so much around the world.

Take this: Bella has just, quite absurdly, punched one of Jacob’s friends in the face.  He promptly turns into a werewolf, threatening Bella (judging from their short temper and apparent inability to keep from shifting, the real mystery is how they managed to maintain their identity a secret for so long).  Jacob immediately comes to her aid, turning into a wolf as well.  Now that Bella has seen who they really are, one of the guys of the pack states, “The wolf is out of the bag.”

I’m sorry, that’s so pathetic, it’s not even funny.  After I heard that line I figured that it must be straight out of the book, because no screenwriter worth his name would ever write a line so cheap.

The biggest problems I have with this movie are that very little actually happens and that the director tried to give the movie some heft and pathos by slowing everything down, but that simply made the movie longer, not better.  At one point I actually sped the playback up to 1.5, where the audio still plays but is usually not very clear, and yet I could understand everything Jacob was saying.  The higher speed made him sound about normal.  That’s not good.

The Volturi are introduced as a way to bring Edward and Bella back together, but aside from that scene and a couple pursuits of Victoria, the whole production comes down to a guy wanting a girl who wants another guy who left her.  Bo-ring.
Not even the plentiful beefcake provided by Taylor Lautner and his friends are enough to make you care.

Robert Pattinson, the only glimmer of hope from Twilight, only really shows up in the second half of the movie and with little to do.  Taylor Lautner’s talent is barely appreciable since he clearly was only hired for his abs, and Kristen Stewart’s acting is once again pretty lame.  I can’t believe I recently read she commands $20 million per movie already and that the three of them will each make $25 million for the next two installments, plus a share of the final gross (total over $40 million each)!!

The Bottom Line: New Moon introduces the werewolves (who by the way look ridiculously big to be taken seriously) in an attempt to keep the action going, but neither them nor Bella’s in-limbo love life are good enough to make us care.  This is worse than Twilight.

Grade: 3