Friday, November 27, 2009

Vanessa, on New Moon

Vanessa, on New Moon

Here's proof that if you bug your friends for guest blogs long enough, someone's bound to crack! Vanessa (of "horse ass braid" fame) saw the Twilight Saga: New Moon on Saturday night. And boy am I glad she did, so now I don't have to! Here's her take on whether it's worth seeing.

I didn’t quite understand the hype around the Twilight series until a couple of weeks ago when I saw the first film. Not having read the books or seen the movie until almost a year after its release, I’d missed an entire chapter defining today’s popular culture and the obsession with vampires. I also didn’t understand how the Pattinson-Stewart-Lautner trio were suddenly in my face everywhere I went. Regardless, I saw the first Twilight movie, and after setting myself up for disappointment, I walked away actually really liking it and anxious for the sequel’s release.

But New Moon, despite making me laugh out loud several times, was a bit of a disappointment.

After Edward (Pattinson) tells Bella (Stewart) he and his family have to leave their small town of Forks, Washington, Bella sinks into deep depression, distancing herself from her friends and family. She begins to grow close to Jacob (Lautner), until he finds out that – shock! – he’s actually a werewolf. Poor guy, I hate it when that happens. What’s even more, they’re fairly poorly animated werewolves. With all the technology we have today, surely they could have done a better job of making the werewolves look more realistic.

The Bella-Edward romance that dominated the first movie gets eclipsed (pun intended) by the new “friendship” between Bella and her suddenly ripped protégé Jacob, and despite his blindingly white teeth, affliction for shirts, and need to wear cut-off jeans, their chemistry doesn’t quite match up. The best scene of the entire movie involved Bella flying off a dirt bike, hitting her head on a rock, and Jacob resourcefully tearing his shirt off to wipe away the blood. The entire theatre laughed in unison – of course, just take your shirt off!

Besides a few book-ending scenes of Bella and Edward gazing into each other’s eyes, à la original Twilight, the movie was disappointingly void of actual contact between the two. We spend most of the movie watching Bella grow close to Jacob and then pull away, when really all the tweens (ok, myself included) want to see is Bella and Edward together.

When Edward is mistakenly informed that Bella has died, he decides to kill himself, for a world without her is not one in which he wishes to live. Romantic, yes, but without the heat of the two together, his intentions fall flat. Granted, it’s hard to top the piano or prom scenes from the first movie.

The film is still worth seeing even if it’s not as broodingly charged as the first. We get a deeper glimpse into vampire culture, making for some intriguing situations, and when Bella and Edward do grace the screen together, it is pretty hot. However, the movie doesn’t quite live up to expectations after the success of the first, and one can only hope the third will put the series back on course.

Lots of gratuitous shirtless scenes, though. Out of place, yes, but I’m not going to complain.

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