Review of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) by Chads — 22 Nov 2009

The opening scenes of "New Moon" plays more like episodic television than it does a feature film. It works as comfort food, that is, if you were comforted by the Catherine Hardwicke original.

There's the high school parking we all know and love, the place where Edward(Robert Pattison) saved Bella(Kristin Stewart) from a swerving vehicle with just a single hand, and there's the high school itself, still composed of a student body that's not all entirely human.

(The Cullen vampires remind me more of the preppies in the Donna Tartt novel "The Secret History" than they do bloodsuckers.) In this week's(year's) episode: Bella turns seventeen! Jacob(Taylor Launter) gives her a dreamcatcher.

Of course. He's "Indian". Jacob's rival, Edward, who is too lazy to make, and too cheap to buy, a proper gift for Bella, gives the mopey(and dopey) girl a kiss. It's what she asked for.

If you swoon at this, and you're not a fourteen-year-old-girl, you need to watch Lloyd Dobler in action, or heck, even f***in' Angel(from Joss Whedon's brilliant serial reworking of the original "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" movie), who is not quite as pasty-faced, or bloody boring, as Edward.

"New Moon", incidentally named after singer-songwriter Elliott Smith's posthumous 2007 album of rare tracks, could possibly inform this vampire, who's certainly depressing enough, and dead, like the Portland, Oregon-based musician.

What can you say about a film which improves significantly when its key supporting character is off the screen? Some of us like Edward better as a vapor.