Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Okay, let me just get this out in the open to start with. I like the Twilight Saga, I actually went to this movie because I thought it would be good. It wasn't. Let me explain.

Okay first, this film was doomed from the beginning as the book that it was based on was a very internal book, there is really no action to speak of and what the book is about is Bella's mental attachments to Jacob and Edward. A movie can't really have most of the action take place in a person's thoughts, so they movie was of course going to not be as good as the book. But there is absolutely no excuse for it to be this bad.

The many terrible casting mistakes which were hidden behind the masterful directing of the first film, called just Twilight and I strongly recommend it, is now way too apparent. Mr. Pattinson may have a great following among the female fans, but his acting is, at times, painful. Watching him struggle through some lines from Romeo and Juliet at the beginning is unbearable.

I have to say though, as both of the lovers, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, are both doing the same thing with their acting I assume that it was because they were told to do it by the director or, alternatively,she saw in the first movie that Mr. Pattinson can not act so she started matching his acting style to make it look intentional. I have no idea why Mr. Pattinson has become such a teen idol, as he is neither talented nor particularly good-looking, and he seems to have no understanding of the character he is playing.

And that is one of the places where this movie, and in some ways the last one as well, falls short of the books, the character of the male romantic lead. In the book he is not as brooding as Mr. Pattinson decides to play him as, also, and this is what really bugs me, is that in the books Edward has a sense of humor which is non-existent in the film. He never seems to have any emotions other than brooding confusion.

Also, and I apologize for hitting on Robert Pattinson so much, he won't say his freakin' lines!!! All he does is insert pauses into places where there should be no pauses! It makes the already bad script worse. It becomes just comical when he says things like "I left so you could have a normal life" with several pauses insert into it.

There is also a lot of blatant attempts to appeal to the teenage girl market with most of the male characters walking around shirtless for most of the movie. In the first scene where a werewolf, who has obviously been pumping some iron(played quite well by Taylor Lautner), rips of his shirt for no particular reason, it is the first time for this movie but by far not the last, the cinema exploded in what was either laughter, which I was participating in, at the sheer stupidity of the moment or cheers at Mr. Lautner's ability to work out or take steroids, whichever.

The movie itself dragged, focusing to much on the dull elements and not enough on the interesting bit. The pace was so slow that one might very well fall asleep during the film, as one of the guys who went with me to see it almost did 4 times.

One last point, there is way way too much kissing. One passionate kiss at the end can be much more powerful than the 5 or so kisses that occour in this film. Actually there was an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel in which the lovers never kiss. It felt like the filmmakers knew what their audiences wanted and gave it them, disregarding the fact that it killed the movie. They knew that all the kissing was out of character, they knew that all the shirtless men didn't really make sense to the plot, but they did both of those things anyway.

However my favorite character, Alice, is played very well by Ashley Greene and Michael Sheen is terrifying as the King of the Vampires. Dakota Fanning is also very good as Jane one of Mr. Sheen's minions.


2/5 Stars