1/2

This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

Walking out of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, I was struck by the odd sensation that I was suddenly living in an alternate universe where the world was peopled by vampires and the movie we’d just seen was their version of Days of our Lives. Like something cobbled together from an adolescent girl’s secret diary, New Moon is a ridiculously frivolous soap opera, a harlequin melodrama with fangs. That said, get your smelling salts ready boys, because the girls are going to swoon.

In this second installment of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart) and her vampire beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), continue their burgeoning romance in the face of ever-mounting jeopardy. Following an incident that convinces Edward their romance is too perilous to continue, the Cullens pack up and leave town. Bella, comatose with grief and given to shrieking night terrors, turns to childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) for moral support. Discovering she can see visions of Edward whenever she puts herself in physical jeopardy, she commits to a series of escalating extreme activities.

As Jacob grows ever more smitten with Bella, and she, to a lesser degree with him, old enemies suddenly return. With Edward gone, who will protect Bella? Luckily Jacob, a member of a mysterious Native American tribe, has a supernatural secret of his own — he has the ability to transform into a werewolf. Torn between the two men — one she adores but who has abandoned her, and another she could come to love and is always by her side — Bella discovers that Edward is in mortal danger of his own, danger only she can circumvent, danger that just might demand of her the ultimate sacrifice.

There is no denying that Stephanie Meyer’s novels and films have struck a cultural chord. Just listen to the teenaged girls who reenacted the crowds’ reaction to the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show every time the Twilight men appeared on screen. Just listen to my 30-something female friends who can barely contain their unbridled glee whenever the topic comes up. Be they teenagers in the midst of newfound longing or mature women using the series as a vehicle to travel back in time and relive those same feelings, the Twilight series has become a mania with which most men can’t even pretend to identify. Unfortunately, this very myopia, which a novel can easily augment and bolster, cripples the films.

The character of Bella is not, in any way, shape or form, romantically attractive. I’m not saying that Stewart isn’t beautiful (she is), but the actress’ shtick, here and in nearly all her films, is to walk around looking as depressed as humanly possible. Miserable Bella and euphoric Bella wear precisely the same expression. The full sum of the chemistry between she and Pattinson in the first film amounted to intense gazes shot across large rooms. Here it is nearly inaudible whispers while clutching one another in the pouring rain. Has Stewart cracked a smile in any of these films? Has she shown even the slightest glimmer of a personality? No. So why should anyone believe that a young man (much less two) would be hopelessly and mystically smitten by her? So intent on crafting male characters for their female fans, it never crossed the filmmakers’ minds to make Bella remotely attractive to the men dragged into the theater with them.

Parents like Twilight because it is a world of unwavering chastity (Meyer is a devout Mormon), but film, being a visual medium, is not going to let a little thing like virtuousness spoil a perfectly good fawning fan base. New Moon goes to great lengths to ensure all the men in it are half naked as often as possible. Lautner especially spends the majority of the film in jean shorts and little else. While this reverse nudity is only “fair” given Hollywood’s obsession with the male gaze and the historical inequity of uncovered female to male flesh, the exposed skin, flagrant bait for female fans, is just the visual manifestation of what the entire series has been doing psychologically all along — superficial magnetism over sophisticated chemistry.

While supernatural lore — be it vampirism, werewolves, zombies or other monsters — is in a constant state of flux and natural evolution, Twilight, like so many of the vampire vehicles currently suffusing pop culture, cares very little for the conventions of the world it inhabits. Not only that, it breaks the rules with barefaced and brazen aplomb. Vampires die if exposed to direct sunlight? Not ours! They just sparkle. Werewolves transform when struck by the light of a full moon? Not ours! They can change at will. This dumbing down of the mythology, while certainly not the chief raison d’être for the film’s failure, is, nonetheless, indicative of its lackadaisical attitude and careless misappropriation of established lore in the pursuit of the widest possible audience.

It is only after the film ends that one realizes nothing really happened (the Cullens, Edward included, are absent for most of the film). The penultimate section, which introduces the only real tension, is so rushed and emotionally ill-equipped that it makes the narrative oversight all the more glaring. Director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) — who has essentially made a succession of interlocking music videos — and screenwriter Melisa Rosenberg allow no levity whatsoever. They treat the material with an unrelenting seriousness that the film never earns. All that is left is faux seriousness masquerading as profound solemnity.

There is nothing whatsoever new about New Moon.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.