Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Dakota Fanning, Michael Sheen, Peter Facinelli
Directed by: Chris Weitz
Rating:
I really rather enjoyed Twilight, the fist instalment in Stephen Meyer's teenage vampire saga. It was fresh, playful, romantic and ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek. Its follow-up, New Moon, however, is a very different kettle of po-faced, somewhat smelly fish.
We're back in the dreary west coast town of Forks, home to our heroine Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart) and her undead beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Like most teenagers, Bella's only happy when she's got something to moan about, and this time it's her eighteenth birthday: while Edward remains forever seventeen, she is getting old.
This does not endear her to me.
But Edward's eternal youth is a curse as well as a blessing: the townspeople are becoming suspicious (apparently, although they seem remarkably obtuse to me) and it's time for the Cullen clan to move on, leaving Bella behind. For her own good, or so Edward thinks. Doh!
Now Bella really has something to complain about she throws herself wholeheartedly into the depressive, grieving emo thang, losing all her friends in the process. But help is at hand in the muscular form of Jacob (Taylor Lautner) a ludicrously well-honed sixteen-year-old lad from the nearby Native American reservation, whom Bella uses shamelessly to fill the void left by Edward.
Oh, Bella, you sure now how to pick ‘em. For Jacob, it transpires, is actually a werewolf, part of a pack of hunks sworn to defend their territory from vampires, which mainly seems to involve running round the foest wearing nothing but shorts, looking like the Chippendales on a camping weekend. Yup, it's the skinny, peelly-wally glittery people vs. the buff, tanned braves: are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?
To be honest, unless you're thirteen, I very much doubt you'll care.
Somehow, New Moon manages to introduce multiple plot strands and not resolve any of them (Victoria the vampire from the last film is still hanging around, plus we get to meet the Volturi, an Anne Rice-lite consortium of Italian vampire elders, led by Tony Blair, er, Michael Sheen); to drag on for over two hours while, in the main, very little happens. Yawn.
Bella wins the title of 'heroine you most want to slap' hands down, while Edward (who actually has very little screen time – thank God) could be replaced by a waxwork and no-one would notice. When the characters you like best are a bunch of cuddly CGI wolves, you know you're in trouble.
Okay, so it's not all bad: there are some lighter moments to enjoy (and lots of naked torsos on parade) and there's some fun stuff going on in the background. But on the whole, well, yes, it's bad: tedious, overblown, self-indulgent nonsense that takes itself far too seriously. Less a vampire feast, my friends, more a dog's dinner…