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The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Film)
Rating: M
Running Time: 130
Country: USA
Director: Chris Weitz
Cast: Ashley Greene, Robert Pattinson, Jackson Rathbone, Nikki Reed, Kristen Stewart
Distributor: Hoyts
Film Worth: $10.50
Release Date: November 19, 2009
The first half is laboured and feels like a bridge for the third instalment, but there’s still plenty of cast chemistry and great set pieces.
The dedicated, fevered fans of the cinematic Twilight series have no interest in what film critics have to say about their beloved movies. Their love is unconditional, and in an era when things like loyalty and passion don't count for much, that kind of enthusiasm should be celebrated.
The first Twilight film was politely savaged by a group of people - male and female critics, most of them ranging in age from late twenties to sixties - that it most certainly and distinctly wasn't aimed for. The Twilight Saga is, for the most part, aimed at teenage girls, who will care nothing for the content of this review. Redundancy aside (and for those more casual observers of the film series), here is our two cents' worth.
While Twilight had punch and bundles of surprise value because of its almost out-of-the-blue status, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is stately, over-long and excruciatingly aware of its newfound pop-cultural significance. Twilight benefitted immeasurably from the ragged sensibilities of director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, The Lords Of Dogtown). On the second film, she has been replaced by Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass), who too readily buys into New Moon's depressive, bum-trip narrative.
Much of the film consists of heroine Bella (Kristen Stewart) moping around the autumnal surrounds of her small home town after her vampire love, the brooding Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), deserts her. She's tortured, pained, distant and difficult, remaining at arm's length from her caring father (Billy Burke) and good-kid friends. Sooky Bella eventually finds solace in the arms of her childhood friend, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who is equally tortured. He loves Bella, and is also riddled with angst because he's, yes, a werewolf, charged with protecting the woods from vampires, including Bella's beloved Edward. Cue tortured love triangle.
Apart from a lot of sulking, bottom-lip-quivering, dramatically purple prose and brooding, not much happens in New Moon until Bella races off to Italy to save Edward from The Volturi, the vampire world's equivalent of ruling royalty.
Led by Michael Sheen's wonderfully camp and malevolent Aro, and juiced up even further by Dakota Fanning's icy, menacing minion Jane, The Volturi are great fun, and wouldn't feel out of place in the sexier, more mature vampire world of author Anne Rice.
A number of interesting plot points are also revealed about Bella, making the second half of The Twilight Saga: New Moon far more entertaining and invigorating than the first.
This holds a lot of promise for the next film in the series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (to be directed by wild man David Slade, who made the adrenalised and bloody Hard Candy and 30 Days Of Night), and makes New Moon look more like a transitional bridge in the series.
Despite its dreary patches, there's undeniably a lot to like here: Stewart and Pattinson have honest-to-god chemistry; there are a number of moody, beautifully composed set pieces (werewolf attacks; Bella being stalked underwater by Rachel Lefevre's vicious vampire, Victoria; the clash with The Volturi); and the deepening of the series' mythology. It's pretty good, but not great, though The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will hopefully put things right...