A review of the latest franchise in the Twilight Saga, starring Robert Pattinson
Walking out of the theatre after watching the second installment of the Twilight Saga, entitled “New Moon”, I could not help but imagine how novelist Stephanie Mayer felt about how her very-well received novel was adapted to the silver screen; because apart from the box office numbers, the film was met with extremely negative reviews; and this one will be no exception.
I have to admit that I did not have very high expectations regarding this film since I was not very pleased with its predecessor. But the flop of this film was beyond expectations.
Picking up where Twilight left off, this film follows moody teenager Bella Swan as she’s dumped by her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen By Lilian Wagdy for fear of hurting her. She spends months weeping in her bedroom, before another boy falls in love with her. But Bella isn’t destined to have a normal relationship. Turns out her new guy, the hunky Jacob Black is a werewolf.
The major disappointment about this film is the miserable nature of Bella and Edward’s romance. Robert Pattinson, who became an overnight heartthrob since appearing in Twilight, plays Edward Cullen as a gloomy, grim fellow with almost no personality at all. It doesn’t help that Kristen Stewart’s Bella is a bland and passive character who remains sullen and self-absorbed throughout the film, pleading Edward to “change her” and then turning into some suicidal maniac each time he turns her down.
While the first film and its director Catherine Hardwicke successfully managed to capture the intensity and yearning between Bella and Edward, New Moon directed by Chris Weitz, pushes them too much to the point that the chemistry feels forced and phony. Weitz only gets the action portions right. The scene in which Jacob (played by Taylor Lautner) first morphs into a CGI werewolf and leaps onto another of his species is nothing short of stunning, and the same can be said for a musical sequence in which a pack of werewolves chase a female vampire through a thick forest.
But these are small consolations in what is otherwise a painfully long, uniformly boring melodrama with affected performances from each of its three leads.
It’s an ordeal to endure this one. It made a ton of money when it was released internationally, but that doesn’t make it any good. Watch it entirely at your own risk.
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