The Twilight Saga: New Moon

When I reviewed Twilight exactly one year ago, I called it a lethargic and labored story about people we don't care anything about, saying dialogue that makes the characters sound like they learned English by reading grocery store romance novels. Everything I said then applies to New Moon, except for the lethargic part. This movie goes beyond lethargic to simply being dead in the water. I don't remember the last time I have been so bored watching a movie, or when a film seemed so torturously long that I thought my watch was broken every time I checked it (which was often).

Here is a movie that literally screams out to be parodied. I'm not talking about recent lame movie parodies like Dance Flick or Disaster Movie, I'm talking about the masters at Mad Magazine. They could have taken this deadly-dull, mopey, miserable thing and ripped it to comic shreds. The movie's certainly asking for it. It takes itself so deadly seriously, but doesn't even seem to realize just how melodramatic, implausible, and downright ridiculous the whole thing is. What I wouldn't give for any of the characters in this movie to crack a smile, or make a smart or witty observation. But, they constantly mope about, trying to look tortured, but instead look like they're bored. We rejoin young lovers, Bella (Kristen Stewart, who switches between two facial expressions - concerned and blank expressionless) and the vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson, who pretty much sticks to blank expressionless the entire film), as tragedy strikes. Bella goes to Edward's house to celebrate her birthday, and gets a paper cut from some wrapping paper. This causes one of Edward's vampire kin to try to attack her, driven crazy by the scent of her blood. Edward protects her, but realizes that their relationship isn't going to work out. He announces he's breaking up with her, and she'll never see him again.

Bella is upset, to say the least. As soon as Edward vanishes from her sight, she starts running aimlessly through the forest after him, calling his name. She literally does this until nightfall, when she suddenly trips on something, collapses to the ground, and kind of lies in a pile of leaves sobbing uncontrollably. From that point on, she starts crying out blood-curdling screams in her sleep, which concerns her poor father (Billy Burke), but not enough for him to actually do anything to help her. His role is to just stand around, look concerned at his daughter, and not even notice when she suddenly decides to fly off to Italy at a moment's notice (that comes much later). Without Edward, Bella feels like she can't go on. She also becomes addicted to putting her life in danger, because whenever she contemplates jumping off a cliff, or getting on a motorcycle with a strange man who might have impure intentions, a ghost-like image of Edward appears before her, telling her not to do what she's thinking of doing. It's the only way she can see her beloved, so she keeps on finding ways to intentionally put herself in harm's way. If you think this sounds horribly selfish and self-centered, you don't know the half of it. Bella spends the entire endless running time caring nothing about herself, and her vampiric hottie boyfriend.

The only friend Bella has left is Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who has become quite muscular and ripped since the last time we saw him. The movie feels the need to remind us of this whenever possible, to the point that it's a rare sight that Jacob is seen wearing a shirt, even when a cold, freezing rain is falling upon his chiseled pecs. Jacob wants to comfort Bella and help her forget Edward, but he's got a secret of his own. He turns into a very large CG wolf whenever trouble's a-brewin'. It seems that the wolves and the vampires have been having some kind of hidden war with each other for years. Now Bella's trapped in the middle, forced to choose between a hunky guy who may or may not be paper trained, and an equally hunky but paler guy who might have a moment of weakness, and devour her over the slightest paper cut. This is the central crisis of New Moon, and the characters handle it basically by talking in constant monotones, showing as little emotion as humanly possible. The entire cast seem to be asleep at the wheel, and sometimes even forget to react to what's going on. When Bella finds out that Jacob can turn into a wolf, she asks, "Can't you find a way to just stop?", in a tone that can best be described as total indifference.

A majority of the film is made up of shots of ripped men with their shirts off, visions of Bella and Edward lying or strolling through flower-filled fields, and a lot of scenes where the actors stare confused at each other, as if they're waiting for director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) to yell "cut". After nearly two hours of this, the action switches to Italy, where we meet an elder council of vampires. This is supposed to be where the action finally picks up, but the movie stays in low gear. It also wastes the talents of two very good actors (Michael Sheen from Frost/Nixon, and Dakota Fanning), who show up as vampires, but are given absolutely nothing to do but stand there. Maybe they're being saved for the next one, but it's maddening none the less. The entire climax feels dragged out to ridiculous lengths, while being anticlimactic at the same time. It achieves this by having the characters talk so slowly and linger over each spoken word, while not really wrapping anything up at all. The last half hour is all one big set up for the next film, Eclipse, which was already being advertised at my theater with a "Coming Soon" poster and a release date of June 30th of next year. The only good news of this is that there's only four films in the Twilight franchise, and with them coming out so quickly, we'll be able to go on with our lives before too long.

New Moon manages to be agonizingly slow, as well as slow-witted. Unless you're a rabid fan of the original book series, there's no excuse to see this. In fact, the fans don't even seem to know the reason. Walking out of the theater, I saw some girls talking about the movie, and I just had to ask them what the appeal of this franchise was to them. They stopped, as if puzzled by the question, and then said "the hot guys". They then went and bought another ticket for tonight's show with other friends, who will most likely enjoy it for the same reason. Accuse me of being stuck up if you must, but I ask for more from my cinema experience. This is one of the worst films of 2009.

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