NEW MOON – chris weitz - 1.9 / 10

The experience of watching the second installment in what’s been dubbed, rather grandiosely, The Twilight Saga, is akin to getting kicked in the brain: disorienting and painful. It’s disorienting because there’s just no reason that something like this should have earned the shrieking adoration of millions of people, and painful because nothing in it has been crafted with any tact, subtlety or skill.


Based on the second book in a quartet of horribly written, thinly-veiled Book of Mormon allegories, New Moon basically boils down to one woman wanting to have sex and her super-hot, century-old boyfriend telling her to wait. This is a better lesson, I suppose, than the one in Twilight (which was, basically, as long as you’re in love, it’s okay if your boyfriend’s abusive), but it’s a very strange one to have engendered such devotion from its female fan base. You would think that millions of women around the world wouldn’t be interested in a story that revolves around a pathetic, feeble girl who falls to pieces the instant her man isn’t there to hold her hand. You would think that millions of women wouldn’t care for a film that thinks women should be defined exclusively by the men in their lives, even if that means suffering horrible physical abuse (as one werewolf’s fiancé does). But then again, the men in these women’s lives are really hot. And, when you get right down to it, that’s all that really matters, right?

In theory, it’s great that Hollywood is starting to make movies for this previously underserved portion of the marketplace. But when those films see their audience in the most reductive and offensive light possible and are still rewarded with slavish devotion, you have to fear for the future of our society. When so many women, young and old, can be fooled into loving this crap just because there are hot guys in it, it starts to make you wonder if maybe the film’s hateful ideas about women aren’t a little closer to the mark than you’d like to admit.

It’s really rather pointless to talk about what actually happens in the film because little of note actually transpires. Edward (the ‘vampire’ love object (that’s in quotes, by the way, because Edward bears no resemblance whatsoever to anything that’s previously been called a vampire)) abandons poor, pathetic Bella (Kristen Stewart, whose lip-biting, hair-flipping act is getting old really fast) because his ‘vampire’ brother freaked out at the sight of her cut finger. Leaving aside the implied insanity that would’ve transpired had she happened to have had her period at the time, this seems like a completely irrational overreaction more suited to a preadolescent than a 109-year-old ‘vampire.’

But, anyway, Edward leaves, despite knowing that Bella’s life is probably in danger, and she spends the next four months, literally, sitting in her room sulking. She cries and screams and wails and begs and pleads in what has to be the most pathetic display of petulant teenagerdom in film history. Honestly, what the hell does 109-year-old Edward see in this dingbat? I’m only thirty and the thought of spending any considerable length of time in the presence of any seventeen year old girl let alone one this self-absorbed would have me reaching for the straight razor. The only conclusion I can come to is that Edward is just a dumbass. Maybe these two are made for each other.

So, anyway, eventually Bella recovers enough to leave the house whereupon she befriends Jacob (Taylor Lautner, painfully bad) who, besides taking his shirt off at the slightest provocation to reveal his cartoon steroid body, is gaga for Bella. She, of course, is still in love with Edward and starts behaving as recklessly as possible because, whenever she’s in danger, he appears as some sort of Obi-Wan like apparition. Shirtless Jacob, a werewolf as it turns out to absolutely no one’s surprise but Bella’s, saves Bella over and over again until she eventually goes to Italy because… Oh, never mind. The audience for this film clearly isn’t there for the plot so what’s the use in recapping its ridiculousness?

It does beg the question, though, of what people find so enjoyable about these movies. When it has an IMDb rating of 8.0 / 10 a full month before it opens, it’s clear the fans of this film aren’t interested in what the film is actually about. If they can love a movie sight unseen, how can you even attempt to criticize it? If they love it without actually needing to see it, any long established criteria about what makes something good or bad go completely out the window. The fans of these films are, basically, religious zealots who won’t be dissuaded from their beliefs no matter the evidence to the contrary. That’s disturbing enough in and of itself but when you take into account that the object of their devotion sees them as pathetic, stupid creatures with no inherent value, it becomes something else altogether, something that's truly horrifying.