The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Good lord. This one is... just... ugh. (Check out our thoughts on the original Twilight here.)



Directed By: Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and Robert Pattinson
Plot Summary: "They're trying to trick people into thinking that there's a plot. Or that Edward's there for more than twelve minutes."

When New Moon begins, it's Bella's 18th birthday, and she's having a crisis about turning one year older because Edward refuses to turn her. You'd think her obsession with her far-older, half-dead man would render this irrelevant, but Bella's freaking out because she wants to be frozen at the same point Edward is, at age 17. Ignoring Bella's pleas to not remind her that she's aging, Edward's sister Alice puts together a birthday party at the Cullens' house. There's a completely overblown accident with some wrapping paper, and Edward's brother/Alice's boyfriend Jasper tries to kill Bella when he gets a whiff of her blood dripping from her finger. Edward flips a s*** and the Cullens leave town, plunging Bella into a wretched depression and allowing Jacob to stroll in and pick up the pieces.

Let's take a moment to really lay out the depression situation in this movie. Bella sits around and doesn't speak to her dad, Charlie, or her friends, for at least three months, as the Spinning Camera Montage of Despair tells us. She has nightmares that cause her to scream like a goat being skinned alive (seriously, we can't figure out what on Earth she could've been seeing to make those noises). Every single day, she writes emails to Alice, and each of those emails gets sent back with that "undeliverable; return to sender" tag, since the Cullens have completely disappeared.

After awhile, Bella starts hanging out with Jacob, fixing motorcycles, and eating lunch with her friends at school again. She says it helps, but eventually this leads to Bella becoming an adrenaline junkie. How? Well, every time Bella engages in a near-death experience, she sees Edward telling her to be safe and not do anything stupid, as he made her promise when he left her. These visions of Edward are strangely responsive to each particular NDE for some reason, but whatever. The point is that Bella catapults off a motorcycle, hitting her head in the process, and jumps off a cliff and nearly drowns, just so she can see Edward again. Bella is so pathetic that it's downright disgusting, but meanwhile, Romeo & Juliet-obsessed Edward is starving himself to death in Brazil because he's away from her, so if anyone deserves each other, it's these two.

Observations Made As We Watched:
 --"He's a 109-year-old virgin, no wonder he breaks everything when they finally do it."
--"Jacob Black is a butterface."
--"You'd think vampires would be more careful about saying 'humans' the way we'd say 'pets.'"
--"Who the f*** gets a papercut that goes that deep?" / "And from WRAPPING PAPER?"
--"This bitch is crazy."
--"I'm completely against banning books, but I don't think I'd let my kids read Twilight."
--"The screaming is my favorite."
--"Sarah? Sarah! Wake up! ...Did you fall asleep and I'm sitting here watching this?! SARAH, THIS IS TREASON!"

"Oh, this storyline makes sense. Because all vaguely-ethnic friends are mechanics."

For anyone who doesn't know, Edward Cullen is absent from 80% of this movie. The rest is about Bella missing Edward while Jacob tries and fails to convince her that he's the right boy for her. (This is half the plot of the next movie, too, except Edward's present the entire time.) Taylor Lautner gets to shed that vomitacious wig, and since he buffed up in order to not lose his job when they wanted to recast him for someone older, he spends a fair chunk of his screen time shirtless. He's so shirtless that his Barbie doll comes shirtless too.

(Certainly an improvement, but that doesn't save Jacob from being obnoxious.)

Anyway, since Jacob's Native American tribe, the Quileutes, are "descended from wolves," Jacob discovers his identity as a massive werewolf and is forced into a pack of other short-haired, shirtless Quileute boys. He also becomes an obsessive, raging protector of Bella, like a trigger-happy Rottweiler. When Alice returns and Edward calls Bella's house, fearing Bella's death (because Alice has visions of the future and she saw Bella jump off that cliff ), Jacob tells Edward -- in true Balthasar style -- that Bella is dead. Granted, Balthasar thought Juliet was really dead, and Jacob did it out of spite, but in any case, Edward decides it's time to die. He did, after all, tell Bella at her birthday party, "You're my only reason to stay alive, if that's what I am." Edward's plan is to make the Volturi, the vampire elders, kill him for revealing himself to a crowd of humans, which would violate vampire law. Alice sees his plan, she and Bella immediately fly to Italy and steal a Ferrari (WTF?), and Bella stops Edward in the nick of time. Yay, now this crapfest can continue for another three movies!

The Best Part: In an inexplicable casting coup, the producers somehow got Michael Sheen involved as the Volturi leader, Aro, who can read every thought a person has ever had, just by touching them. He slinks around with a smile that somehow manages to be innocent while simultaneously predatory. Then, he instructs one of his vampires, Jane (Dakota Fanning, as glacial as she could possibly get), to torture Edward and Bella with her power, which is Stephenie Meyer's equivalent of the Cruciatus curse. Bella is apparently immune to supernatural manipulation, as neither Edward nor Aro can read her mind, and Jane fails to cause her physical pain. (Plot Hole Alert: Earlier in the movie, Bella responds to Jasper's power to manipulate emotions when she agrees to have that ill-fated birthday party.) Anyway, Aro's dumbfounded-yet-fascinated reaction when he realizes that he can't read anything from Bella is the sort of twisted, fantastic moment that can occur when seasoned thespians show up in Twilight movies. It's also the same sort of spark that happens during Anna Kendrick's scenes as Jessica, Bella's hilariously insecure, sarcastic classmate.

The Worst Part: Bella. Seriously, if you know that there are vampires and all sorts of things out there that want you dead, why wouldn't you learn to defend yourself instead of hoping one of your stalkers shows up at the right time? Why wouldn't you carry wooden stakes in your purse? She lives in the damn woods; it's not hard to get them. It's one thing to be at a disadvantage because you're dealing with vampires and werewolves, who could physically tear humans from limb to limb. It's another to insist upon being weak and helpless, which is exactly how Bella chooses to not handle her problems.

It's a D- for New Moon.

(Poster and trailer © Summit Entertainment)