The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

Coke vs. Pepsi. McDonald’s vs. Burger King. Edward vs. Jacob. For better or worse, the whole Twilight phenomenon has emerged as one of those polarizing pieces of American culture. You either love it and own every single book in author Stephenie Meyer’s four-part teen-targeted bodice ripper. Or you really, really hate it. What you can’t do, however, is avoid it.

That’s probably why it seems as though it’s been a million new moons since Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), her (literally) sparkly, brooding vampire, began their star-crossed romance. But it’s only been about a year. The intervening time has been blissful, uneventful, and chaste. That is until Bella attends a birthday party in her honor, thrown by Edwards’s on-the-bloodsucking-wagon family. A clumsy move on Bella’s part leads to single drop of blood dripping from her fingertip to the Cullens’ stark-white shag rug. And the smell of it proves to be too much for Edward’s “brother” Jasper, who is relatively new to the idea of not drinking delicious virgin plasma.

Realizing that his lifestyle poses too much of a risk for his beloved, whom he firmly refuses to make immortal, Edward decides to leave Bella behind. The whole Cullen clan hightails it out of their perpetually rainy home in Forks, Washington, but only after Edward breaks Bella’s heart by telling her that “she’s not good for him.” A twirling 360-degree camera angle of the depressed girl, staring out the window as the seasons change, signals the passing of four months of lovelorn misery.

When she finally snaps out of it – thanks to a threat from her dad (Billy Burke) to send her to live in sunny Florida, a place where Edward would never be caught undead – it is with some sort of death wish. Bella has discovered that the only way she can see Edward is when she does something dangerous or reckless. Only then does his perfect, pale face materialize out of thin air to warn her not to be stupid. So, naturally, she gets progressively more stupid.

One of her bonehead ideas involves fixing up a motorcycle, which she then plans to ride at top speeds without a helmet. This decision brings her closer to an old friend, Jacob, a local Native American boy (Taylor Lautner). Except Jacob is hardly a boy anymore. It seems he’s spent the last year drinking the anabolic steroid Kool-Aid and has gotten mighty fine in the process.

He still has a crush on Bella, but despite the way he makes her laugh (or would, if Bella were the sort of girl that ever laughed) and touches her hand gently as they both reach for the monkey wrench, her heart still belongs only to Edward. Poor, gorgeous Jake (and his bulging pecs and 100-watt smile) seem doomed to the friend zone until an additional side effect of puberty takes hold, making him just dangerous enough for Bella to finally notice him. (HINT: he runs in packs and howls at the moon.) So when Bella’s daredevil antics cause Edward to return from his self-imposed exile, the love triangle scene is set.

That scene – set by New Moon’s director, Chris Weitz (brother of Paul, who directed the recent Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant) – satisfyingly ups the visual ante in this sequel. Taking over from Catherine Hardwicke, Weitz paints the gloomy, grey skies over Forks as a perfect metaphor for Bella’s mental state when she loses Edward. As metaphors go, it is more effective – if only slightly less transparent – than the Romeo & Juliet readings assigned in Bella’s English class.

Some choices – including the werewolves’ Bruce Banner-esque wardrobe of bare chests and cut-off jean shorts – are highly questionable, but Weitz makes up for it in improved special effects. Edward’s phantasm-like manifestations don’t have the obvious hidden harness-and-wire element that his tree bounding did in the first installment. Also to Weitz’s credit, the CGI werewolf transformations are lightning-quick and the creatures’ onscreen appearances are unlabored.

If only the same could be said of Stewart’s performance as the heroine. Her refusal to make eye contact with any of her co-stars is more infuriating than Edward’s refusal to get bitey with it. Her idea of acting is to knit her brows, pout her lips (both quite lovely, no doubt), and whisper in a monotone to express every emotion. How could Stewart not muster something a little lustier than that while gazing into Pattinson’s amber-colored sanpaku eyes or up at Lautner’s perfect pearly whites?

It is Lautner who manages to do the heavy lifting acting-wise, particularly in Pattinson’s lengthy onscreen absence. Over the course of the film, Lautner morphs from a happy-go-lucky secondary character to a strong, uber-masculine protector with a temper. He’s so good at this changeover (and he enunciates!) that you almost don’t notice the absurdity of it when he delivers lines like “Don’t get me upset.” You wouldn’t like him when he’s upset.

Maybe that’s the reason Pattinson and Stewart mumble or whisper, respectively, all of their lines: the dialogue throughout New Moon is perfectly ridiculous. For this, Meyer’s simplistic young-adult style is more to blame than screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. Actually, Rosenberg cleverly introduces the device of undeliverable emails to Alice, Edward’s mind-reading sister (Ashley Greene), as a way to make Bella’s narration less intrusive than it was in the first film. But it doesn’t make ‘tween girls giggle any less when Bella proclaims to Jacob out of nowhere: “You’re hot.” She’s referring to his body temperature. Bella later goes on to tell him that he’s “like his own sun.” What in the hell does that mean?

Nonsensical non-sequiturs aside, New Moon is sure to please its legion of fans, and maybe even win a few converts. Hopefully, all of them to Team Jacob.

If you enjoyed this Twilight: New Moon movie review, you might also like:

• Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
• Let the Right One In
• Twilight