Review Catch-Up: “The Twilight Saga – New Moon”

I’m not a fan of the Twilight series.  I’m not against it, I’m just not the obvious target demographic for this franchise.  If all the tween girls and their moms want to read and watch it, that’s fine by me.  The only reason I actually paid money to go to the theatre to watch the latest offering was because I owed my girlfriend since I took her to see Paranormal Activity (which, needless to say, scared the crap out of her).

So, that being said, I’ll get right down to it: this movie is better than Twilight, but that’s not saying much. The acting on Kristen Stewart’s part is improved, but someone needs to give Taylor Lautner some acting lessons, quick.  Can’t really tell from Robert Pattinson, since he’s gone for much of the movie.

My issue with Twilight, which I saw only because director Katherine Hardwicke (whose Thirteen I’m a fan of) was speaking at my school and I wanted to have a better knowledge of her body of work, is that nothing happened. There’s no character development and barely any story.  Also, the whole thing felt like some made-for-TV flick on the SyFy Channel.  I know that fans of the books will come to its defense, but I’m not talking about the books.  My opinion on adaptations is that they exist separately from the source material; if you make a movie out of a book, treat the movie like a movie and not like you have to cram everything in from the book.

Now, this second movie comes along, and more stuff happens.  We do get way more character development here than we did in Twilight, but that’s also part of the problem.  New Moon is nothing but character development.  Instead of the ‘movie-of-the-week’ quality of Twilight, we get a movie that felt like a long TV episode.  We learn more about Bella and her schoolgirl obsession with Edward, more about Jacob and his infatuation with Bella.  But, what we don’t learn is that driving force behind the movie.  The only interested part I can remember is at the end, when Bella goes to Italy to save Edward.  That’s the only part in the movie that I enjoyed.

And about that Italy part.  What the hell was going on?  People dressed in red?  A vampire court that governs all vampires?  At least it was way more interesting than watching Taylor Lautner’s friends go shirtless for half the flick.  Honestly, all those boys wearing nothing but jeans made me think I was watching some gay porn fantasy or something.

Bottom line: more character development, but less story.

If this doesn't look like gay porn, I don't know what does...

If you look at the way the Bourne films are handled, they truly exist separately from the books.  The plots on the books are very different from the movies, which is fine by me.  As long as you get the mood and themes of the book across, you’ve done your job in adapting the work.  I hear they’ve got David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy) to direct, so hopefully he can inject some action into this.  It’s just so damn boring.

4.5/10