The Twilight Saga: New Moon Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 11.21.2009

The second entry of the Twilight saga is here...is the bark worse than the bite was?

Directed by: Chris Weitz
Written by: Melissa Rosenberg

Starring:
Kristen Stewart - Bella Swan
Robert Pattinson - Edward Cullen
Taylor Lautner - Jacob Black
Billy Burke - Charlie Swan
Ashley Greene - Alice Cullen
Michael Sheen - Aro
Rachelle Lefevre - Victoria
Dakota Fanning - Jane
Anna Kendrick - Jessica Stanley
Michael Welch - Mike Newton
Graham Greene - Harry Clearwater
Jackson Rathbone - Jasper Hale
Chaske Spencer - Sam Uley
Peter Facinelli - Carlisle Cullen
Elizabeth Reaser - Esme Cullen
Kellan Lutz - Emmett Cullen
Nikki Reed - Rosalie Hale
Edi Gathegi - Laurent



Running Time: 130 minutes
Rated PG-13 for some violence and action.

In November of last year, teenage readers across the world had reason to cheer: Twilight made it to the big screen and was a huge success. Starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the vampire teen romantic drama based on the smash hit novel by Stephanie Meyers drew mixed reviews at best from critics and derision from guys all over, but still busted out huge at the box office with a nearly seventy million dollar opening weekend. When all was said and done it had grossed nearly $380 million worldwide and put Summit Entertainment, Stewart and Pattinson officially on the map. By the time the dust had settled the DVD had broken records and Summit was moving onto the second book in the series, albeit without Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. With The Golden Compass director Chris Weitz on the job and all of the principal cast of the first film returning, New Moon set out to build upon the fan base established from the novels and the first film, and hopefully go even higher. With principal photography on the third film Eclipse already in the can and rumors flying about filming locations for the final chapter Breaking Dawn, New Moon has received an enormous bow in over 4,000 theaters this weekend.

The film has Stewart returning as Bella Swan, the human teenager in Forks, Washington who is in love with vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson). Bella has turned eighteen and while she is receiving gifts left and right, she doesn't want anyone to celebrate it. Age is weighing heavily on her as she is realizing that she will one day be an old woman while Edward will always be young. Despite her constant requests, Edward refuses to change her into a vampire. When a birthday party thrown by the Cullens nearly goes horribly wrong, Edward leaves with his family and Bella is completely lost. She spends her time having night terrors and seeing her now ex-boyfriend everywhere. The time is right for Jacob Black (Lautner), Bella's childhood friend, to swoop in and be a shoulder to cry on, and hopefully more. He promises that he will never hurt Bella the way that Edward did, but when Bella learns that Jacob has a secret all his own (hint: it involves fur and fangs), Bella finds herself stuck between two potential love interests and their warring species. And then there's Victoria (Lefevre), the lover of the now-dead James from the first film, who wants to kill Bella…not to mention the Volturi, an Italian cabal of ancient vampires who aren't as humane as the Cullens. Amidst this all, can Bella decide on love, or even if she wants to live?

Like Twilight, New Moon is based on the Stephanie Meyers series, and once again Melissa Rosenberg takes Meyer's novel and commits it to screenplay form. Rosenberg reportedly handed in the first draft of the script during the opening weekend of Twilight, despite the fact that Summit Entertainment had only secured rights to the film that very month. The amount of time and attention paid to the script is evident, as it seems unfocused and overly long. When it does focus, it chooses unappealing choices as the targets—namely, the relationship between Bella and Edward, or between Bella and Jacob. It goes without saying that this, a supernatural romance, is going to be focused on this love triangle but it does so while Edward is off-screen and off the continent. Without his presence, Bella is reduced to seeing his image whenever she tries to do something dangerous, like some sort of phantom alarm. The crux of the story, and the reason it fails, is because the relationship between Bella and Edward is just not interesting. The idea of a human who is in love with a vampire has been done before, even with the twist that the vampire isn't evil. Edward is a far less sympathetic character here, as he basically gives Bella the cold shoulder, albeit for a sympathetic reason, and then falls into angst-ridden plans of suicide when he believes his love is dead. Edward is the same mopey archetype that moral vampires like Angel or Nicholas Knight have set the path for, except with far less depth or humor to him. And of course, it doesn't help that he's not the smartest of heroes, having left his girlfriend behind to protect her despite the fact that there is a dangerous vampire out there who wants them both dead.

On the other hand, Bella is given a little more depth this time around. She's no longer as awkward as she was in the first film, but she is as antisocial. The excuse this time around is a broken heart, and the effect is uneven but sometimes effective. She sits on the couch and stares out the window for months, and at night has screaming dreams that sound like a girl going through drug withdrawals. Perhaps Meyers and Rosenberg are trying to make a statement about Edward's effect on the girl and the destructive habit of loving a vampire, but it doesn't always go through right. If that is the case, than apparently loving a werewolf is the equivalent of rehab. Jacob Black is certainly a sunnier character than Edward and even when he is going through his own problems, he comes off more sympathetic than Edward. The problem therein is twofold—first off, Jacob's transition from "friend and possibly more" to "another creature of the night" is badly paced and seems too sudden. Also, anyone who is in the audience knows, whether they've read the books or not, where Bella is going to end up. This film series is about teen angst and forbidden love, and there is far more that is forbidden in loving a creature that isn't alive than there is in loving something that is more alive than normal people can comprehend. That gives this relationship a played-out feeling that causes it to drag consistently.

The tired script isn't helped much by the acting, which is uneven at best. Kristen Stewart does a better job this time around than she did in Twilight. Her character has a darker path to walk, and while she doesn't always handle it well—a moment where she breaks down in the forest and curls up is particularly awkward—she carries the angst well. Tyler Lautner is good most of the time as Jacob Black, helped along by what looks like a good thirty pounds of muscle that was added from his lanky build in the first film. Lautner is warm and engaging, but when he has to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of dramatic performance, he doesn't pull it off fully. Meanwhile, Pattinson is just flat-out bland once again as Edward. His character is the least interesting and most irritating, and the young actor is woefully not up to the task of lifting the vampire above the material. Once again, the supporting cast is mostly what lifts this piece of film-making, with Billy Burke injecting more charisma than before into Bella's father and Ashley Greene and Peter Facinelli doing good work as Alice and Carlisle Cullen. Of the Volturi, Michael Sheen is the only one who gets any real focus, outside of a brief moment for Dakota Fanning as the sadistic Jane. Sheen is a talented actor who brings a lot to the role of Aro, for as much as he is in the film.

Chris Weitz is behind the camera this time around, and he certainly seems to have a better handle on the material than Catherine Hardwicke. Weitz takes what Hardwicke did that worked—shots that are beautiful but not glamorous and the relationship between Bella and her father—and keeps them intact. At the same time he has a few cinematic tricks up his sleeve and he does them well. A 360 degree shot of Bella wasting the months away is done nicely while he gets some good make-up work done on some people, particularly Emily Young, one of the werewolves' fiancée. At the same time, Weitz has no more of a handle on special effects here than Hardwicke did. The biggest special effects shots are of the werewolves, and they are perhaps the most ridiculous looking loup-garou ever committed to film. The first full-on shot looks less like a wolf than it does just a vague framework with glowing eyes and fur, and while there is a good amount of expressiveness in the faces the creatures never look remotely believable or anything but silly. Meanwhile the vampire fights are cheats, handled by blurred motion that has been done better even on TV by shows like Heroes. Weitz is also never able to keep the film on a firm course as he gets distracted this way or that before returning back to the main storyline—which, frankly, is the weakest part of the film.

Perhaps that's the most frustrating thing about this film. Much like Twilight, there are some very interesting moments. The Cullens are an interesting family of vampires, and a scene between Bella and Carlisle early on about the nature of vampires and souls is quite good. The Volturi are also quite intriguing and are talked about a few times before they show up, to make them seem important. The subplot of Victoria wanting Bella dead in vengeance for James's death is nice. And the werewolf foursome shows a strong dynamic between them, lifting the sagging middle of the film when they show. But all in all, these portions form less than a fifth of the films running time, and instead we have the far less interesting teeny-bop romance angst to make the other eighty percent-plus feel far longer than it is. By the time we get to the end, which comes to a cliffhanger whose sappiness is surpassed only by its predictability, viewers are likely to feel like they've lived far longer than Edward's 108 years themselves…most of it spent wasting time here.

The 411: An overwrought, sagging plotline that focuses too much time on the least interesting of the storylines dooms The Twilight Saga: New Moon. While fans of the Stephanie Meyers books and the first film will quite probably be pleased, anyone who didn't enjoy the first film will certainly not be entertained by this one. At only nine minutes longer than Twilight, it feels like much more and the shoddy script, uneven acting by the leads and terrible special effects take away a lot from the wasted good work by the other actors who are in much more interesting subplots. While the film may be critic-proof it is far from bullet-proof, and it doesn't take much looking to find the many holes in this inferior sequel to an already iffy franchise.

Final Score:  3.0   [ Bad ]