If you are not at fever pitch over the release of “New Moon,” then you probably never heard of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series of books about teen love, vampires and werewolves.
Or, you’re over the age of 21.
The full title of the movie sequel is “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which suggests the marketing team won the titling battle. Heaven forbid anybody in America might not realize that “New Moon” is indeed the follow-up to the 2008 smash “Twilight.”
Meyer, like Dan Brown, is a terrible writer who nevertheless came up with a corker of a story line. To understand that story in “New Moon,” you need to have fully absorbed the books or seen the first “Twilight” very recently.
I saw, and enjoyed, “Twilight,” for which director Catherine Hardwicke summoned up a real empathy for the teen angst her characters were enduring. But I was still befuddled by the first 20 minutes of “New Moon,” which expects us to have total recall of everything that happened in Part One.
The overheated Bella (Kristen Stewart), a very human high-school girl in Forks, Wash., is still in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson). He’s a vampire, which explains his pale skin and his gloomy demeanor.
Meyer’s saga exiles Edward for much of “New Moon,” which (as Pattinson became Public Heartthrob No. 1 from the first film) cannot have made life easy for the filmmakers.
His replacement is American Indian lad Jacob (Taylor Lautner). He grows close to lovesick Bella, but he’s got his own secret.
Uh, I guess this is a major spoiler, except for anybody who’s read the books or heard of the movie. Jacob is a werewolf, disappearing into the forests with the rest of his shirtless brethren.
Boy, Bella sure can pick ‘em. No wonder she spends much of the movie staring out windows and wandering through the evergreens.
Hardwicke’s “Twilight” was savvy about the way vampire lore metaphorically stood in for teen trauma. New director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) falls short of that level of sympathy, but he’s helped by the terrific performance of Kristen Stewart, who easily outpoints her fellow actors.
Sillier than its predecessor and too involved in supernatural lore (especially during a detour to Italy, where Michael Sheen plays a vampire lord), “New Moon” won’t be of much interest except to the faithful. The faithful will love it.
A packed preview audience didn’t seem troubled at all by the giant CGI beasts, which look tremendously phony even by computer-generated standards.
The stop-in-midstream ending is clever. Allegedly, Stephenie Meyer intends her books to espouse premarital chastity, which the ending seems to support.
But intention and reality are two different things, and the movies certainly aren’t very chaste. “New Moon” is surely destined to raise temperatures, not lower them.
“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” ½
Part Two of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga, with Forks, Wash., teen Bella (terrific Kristen Stewart) now torn between supernatural Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the suspiciously hairy Jacob (Taylor Lautner). The first movie showed sympathy for its teen characters, but this one has too much vampire lore and too many CGI beasts, and is strictly for fans.
Rated:PG-13 for violence, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood, Cinerama, Metro, Pacific Place, Thornton Place, Uptown, Woodinville, Blue Fox, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor
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