The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Nine weeks after its opening, there was still a hushed reverence among
moviegoers at the Carousel Center 17 on Jan. 17 as a near-capacity
crowd of Team Edward and Team Jacob factions settled in for this second
cinematic stanza, culled from Stephenie Meyer’s best sellers about
thwarted puppy love ’twixt mortals and vampires in Washington state. If
it wasn’t for that devoted fan base, these bloodless soap operas would
have little to recommend, with vampires who can hang around in the
daylight, their skin glistening like Liberace’s sequins, and romancing
so chaste that entire families can take in the show without
embarrassment. 

The May-December love affair between
18-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) and 109-year-old sawtooth Edward
(Robert Pattinson) hits an inevitable reality, as depicted in the
opening dream sequence. Unless Edward gives Bella a hickey and becomes
one of the undead, she’s going to wind up as a platonically devoted but
really old broad, while Edward will forever look like Luke Perry
Jr. (In an obvious touch by the filmmakers, when Bella awakens, on her
bed rests a copy of Romeo and Juliet.) And when Bella’s cut
finger (a nod to Bram Stoker) during her birthday party triggers some
violent reactions amid Edward’s fanged family, Edward declares the
relationship far too dangerous to Belle and so he leaves town. 

Lovesick Bella, however, learns she can
conjure spectral images of Edward whenever she does reckless behavior
like cliff diving, perhaps taking a cue from Elvis Presley in Fun in Acapulco.
Simmering on the fringes is Jacob (Taylor Lautner), an abs-fab werewolf
who becomes the third wheel in this love triangle. Feminists may carp
that mopey Bella might be too needful of male companionship, yet the
females who have read and reread Meyer’s adolescent-geared page turners
have so far not minded at all that their fantasy hunks from the books
are incarnated by Pattinson and Lautner.

For 2008’s Twilight, director
Catherine Hardwicke accomplished all the heavy lifting, as she set the
stately, non-threatening tone for the fantasy franchise without risking
the wrath of Meyer’s rabid readership. New-to-the-tentpole director
Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, American Pie) adheres to
Hardwicke’s parameters, thus assuring an earnest yet sometimes
ponderous adaptation; if there’s any sense of danger in these movie
translations, it’s already been established in the minds of Twilight’s
tome raiders. Which means any sort of monstrous mayhem usually takes
place off-camera, except when it comes to shirtless smackdowns
involving Jacob and his lycanthropic bicep-bulging buddies. 

Amid the restrained libidos of this
hermetically sealed enterprise, Stewart’s Bella provides a morose
center, while Pattinson’s Edward—who has less screen time—is more of a
gaunt cipher given to Yogi Berra-isms like “You can’t trust a vampire:
Trust me,” and Lautner’s Jacob struts about in cheesecake mode with his
rippled physique. (Returnee Ashley Greene actually has the most fun as
Edward’s bubbly sis Alice.) 

And while Weitz and screenwriter Melissa
Rosenberg badly bungle the expository sequences concerning the Volturi,
a sect of vampire royalty lurking in an Italian town, that plot detour
is where New Moon scores best with its juicy casting. Michael Sheen, a veteran of Frost/Nixon as well as the Underworld
flicks, offers the type of overripe villainy that this anemic movie
series can use, and Dakota Fanning as Jane, a youthful vamp with
ruby-red contact lenses, is wickedly good. Forget Teams Jacob and
Edward: Team Jane, anyone?