New Moon

As an outsider to the cult of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, I confess to not understanding the draw of Bella Swan and her pasty vampiric paramour. Having not read the novels and seen only the uneven, frustratingly bland and often risible (search your heart, you know it to be true) first installment, I was less than eager to catch New Moon. After watching it, less-than-eager seemed far too naive a stance to have taken. Significantly more stilted, cloying and nodescript than its predecessor, Moon stares full-on into the flat, gray abyss of teenage gothic longing and sexual repression. I now understand the draw, but am baffled by the lack of taste with which the series handles its themes.

If anyone here hasn’t seen the first Twilight film, then you really needn’t read any further if you plan on seeing this movie. If you aren’t a hardcore vamp groupie, and are on the fence, I’ll save you some time. Skip this one completely and wander at random into any other theater at the cineplex and you will have a better time than I had. For the rest of you, I’m skipping all but the most basic synopsis, because you probably have it written into your daydreams. Last time, wobbly, vacant-eyed teen Bella got all goo-goo over even more vacant-eyed and self-absorbed (though the series want to sell it as self-posessed) Ed Cullen, part of a local vampire clan. Their chaste courtship in the first movie was the stuff that narcolepsy is made of. I’m at a loss to think of a film with a less lively couple of lovers at its center, and I’m counting that scene of the snails mating to classical music in Microcosmos.

Stewart and Pattinson, both fine in smaller supporting roles in other movies, simply don’t have the dramatic energy or vitality to deliver the heat or conviction necessary to make anyone–save for the most easily swayed–want to follow them. Some claim that the innocence of their relationship hampers that flame. Nope, not at all. See Kiera Knightley and Matthew McFayden in Pride and Prejudice or Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw in the recent Bright Star to see burning passion and commitment without carnal action.