http://www.scifimoviepage.com/newmoon.html
…sounds riveting — a few choice quotes from the review…
“This is still one of the silliest movie franchises out there and one which is totally critic proof. People will still go see it even if there are verifiable reports that watching it makes your eyes bleed. New Moon will make a killing at the box office and maybe I would have liked it if I were several decades younger and didn’t have a penis.”
Of course the whole “becoming a vampire” thing is an in-your-face metaphor for “Bella losing her virginity.” This makes the two Twilight movies the two most painful movies about a chick wanting to pop her cherry audiences have ever been made to sit through in the history of cinema. Edward’s sister wants to “do it” for Bella, but Bella says no, she wants Edward to “do it”. Edward says no, they should wait a bit longer, which is definite proof that he isn’t really a teenager boy.”
Enter Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) who has spent a lot – and we mean a LOT - of time in the gym in-between movies. “Wow,” says Bella. “You’re really buff, Jacob. What are you, like, sixteen?” Actual dialogue, folks.
Jacob is the resident beefcake. Like Kirk in the original Star Trek he uses every lame excuse to take off his shirt to show off his buff new physique. One scene in which he takes off his shirt to wipe some blood from Bella’s forehead had the audience I was in laughing out aloud. Sometimes Jacob doesn’t even need an excuse to take off his shirt and walks around in only a pair of underwear in the pouring rain in any case.
Jacob is running with wolves you see. He’s hanging around with some equally buffed Calvin Klein ad types in the woods, all of which has so much homoerotic subtext to it that it makes those locker room scenes in Top Gun look positively wholesome in comparison.
The problem is the source material. A horror movie with no blood in it? A romance with no sex it in it? It’s as if Ned Flanders tried his hand at writing a bestseller. No-one over the age of sixteen should take any of this stuff seriously. The problem is however that the movie never transcends the material at hand. The previous film had some nice scenery shots, butNew Moon is about as visually appealing as dishwater. The movie looks flat and dull.
The special effects are awful too. Not just those crummy-looking werewolves, but check out those CG scenes of people jumping off a cliff. Really lousy, and it made us miss the days in which they had real stuntmen jump off real cliffs. Sigh. With such cheap special effects one has to wonder what they spent the rumoured $90 million budget on. (Probably gym memberships for the cast.)
So in short: New Moon is silly, overlong, too serious and humourless with some bad acting (the closing scene in which actress Stewart literally gasped elicited loads of unintentional chuckles). It is simply too long and drags on forever. In some ways the movie’s most corny moments (check out Bella and Edward jogging in the woods in slow-motion!) are hilariously funny, which makes it this year’s funniest movie in many ways. But then again, it’s not supposed to be a comedy. (We haven’t seen 2012 yet by the way.)
I can’t wait…
