New Moon Brings Bella Notte
There are those who passionately love the "Twilight" movies and there are those who passionately hate them, I neither love or hate them just find them moderately entertaining in a flawed way. Having said that I can't say that I was hugely impressed with "Twilight: New Moon" because for a movie which is really very simple it becomes painfully drawn out as it runs to 130 minutes. It doesn't need to be that long in fact you could cut out a half hour of posturing and repetitive nonsense and it would still feel drawn out it is such a simple storyline. But even though it is overly long it does deliver more of the same teen vampire romance which some people not only enjoyed in "Twilight" but also in the books that the series is adapted from.
It's Bella's (Kristen Stewart - Adventureland) 18th birthday and age is weighing heavy on her mind as she knows that Edward (Robert Pattinson) will never look any older than he is. But an incident at a party thrown by the Cullen's brings things to ahead with Edward and his family deciding to leave Forks for both Bella and their sake. Distraught at the loss of Edward Bella sinks into a world of melancholy until she discovers that whenever she is in danger a vision of Edward returns to try and protect her. It leads Bella into reuniting with Jacob (Taylor Lautner) who helps her to rebuild a motorbike but becomes more as their friendship grows. But friendship with Jacob brings even more danger for Bella who deep down still loves Edward.
Now I am going to say it again "Twilight: New Moon" does have a seriously simple storyline surrounding the complicated relationship between Bella and Edward. The complication is that Edward and the other Cullen's stay looking the same age whilst Bella doesn't and so Edward and the Cullen's leave Forks before anyone notices. This of course leaves Bella broken hearted suffering more than anyone you will have ever seen because Edward basically dumps her. Although of course Edward is still very much in love with her but doesn't want to curse her by making her an immortal like him.
This leads to Bella becoming friendly with Jacob, initially through trying to find danger as in those moments where she puts her life at risk she has visions of Edward. But things progress as Bella and Jacob start to fall for each other only complicated by a secret surrounding who he is. Things basically come to ahead as Bella learns what that secret is, she also learns that Victoria is still after her and that Edward is also so depressed that he is considering visiting Aro to end his life. Basically it is just romantic trial and tribulations wrapped up in this fantasy story surrounding vampires and other creatures.
The simplicity of all this isn't really an issue because interweaved with all these romantic tribulations we do learn more about the world of the vampires. But the issue is that even with more mystery and embellishment "Twilight: New Moon" should never have ran to 130 minutes. The whole thing feels drawn out with romantic tribulations repeated and scenes lacking pace where needed. And unfortunately in trying to make us love the characters there is too much posturing, scenes which focus on Bella's face too long or the cheesy scene where Jacob removes his shirt to reveal his toned torso. It does at times veer far too close to being cheesy in trying to be melodramatic.
And that is really all there is you can say about "Twilight: New Moon" because the acting is on par with what we saw in "Twilight", young actors basically giving us Teen soap drama but in a movie. Although having said that as a Brit the casting of Michael Sheen as Aro just feels wrong because he looks uncannily like Kenneth Williams from the "Carry On" movies, probably not done intentionally but worse for being so.
What this all boils down to is that "Twilight: New Moon" is pretty much on a par with "Twilight" delivering the same sort of thing which some audiences love whilst others hate. For me it is just average, entertaining but flawed with the simple fact at over 2 hours it feels seriously drawn out and often bordering on the corny with moments of posturing.
Tags: Vampire Movies
