The first Twilight movie was a vaguely faithful adaptation of Ms.Meyer’s work, with overly florid prose translating as an overly long movie that just scraped past our twee sensors into the ’sort of ok’ category thanks to director Catherine Hardwicke nailing an atmosphere of repressed teenage sexuality that lent just the right amount of tension to proceedings. Unfortunately Golden Compass helmer Chris Weitz takes no such risks, slavishly following the purple passages to produce an uneven film that would benefit from healthy dash of irony.
The mopey, very teenage scenario is played to the hilt throughout, with new characters barely introduced and far too much time spent on wistful staring out of windows, resulting in a film that continually slows to a crawl. While it’s perhaps admirable that there are no concessions made to newcomers, it’s also unprofessional to assume that every viewer will be completely versed in this particular Vampire lore. Make no mistake, this is squarely targeted at girls of a certain age with rampant R-Patz lust at the forefront of their minds.
Plot wise, heartbreak is high on the agenda, as Edward’s family decide they’d rather scarf Bella down with ketchup than bond with her. To avoid a repeat performance, Edward leaves her,entrusting her care – as you do – to jailbait werewolf Jacob (a heroically brooding Taylor Lautner). We’re already into the realm of the preposterous McGuffin, and there’s precious little to help you take things seriously. Edward struts around, taking on some unfortunately bargain basement Werewolves as the misery heightens to operatic levels, only broken up by a variety of young men ripping their shirts off, occasionally in slow motion. Dialogue is portentous in the extreme, the supposedly dramatic pauses deployed regularly enough to induce a bizarre, Shatner-like cadence throughout.
Despite the frothing bile it induced in sections of the audience, it’s unprofessional to moan about the..erm…moaning. Overwrought suffering is as central to the mythos as a killer robot is the The Terminator. This is a film about the compelling totality of first love – judged from a distance it’s melodramatic and ridiculous, but for devotees it’s all-important. Judged on its own merits, New Moon contains exactly as much Pattison cod-heroics and oiled body flexing as the book and for fans that’s surely all that matters.
A very specifically targeted, bloody ridiculous mess that will either put you into paroxysms of angsty lust or have you rolling your eyes as our hero skips in slow motion through the enchanted forests of the Pacific Northwest (backed up by – it has to be said – a pitch-perfect indie soundtrack that’s really far too good for this sort of thing). It isn’t a great film, but it is a future guilty pleasure that efficiently sets up characters and events for next year’s ‘Eclipse’.
