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No life in it
FEB 09 -
Twilight: New Moon is a bad formulaic movie, the kind where you doze off in the middle of all the chutzpah and then wake up after 20 minutes to find out that you haven’t really missed much. The girl is devastated with her love departing (who leaves her on good intentions, nevertheless) and she is crying it out on the shoulders of a very good friend with a zillion abs, almost always shirtless to show for it, and who is also in love with her.
It is unfair to be harsh on films that target a specific audience, especially when you are not part of that target group. It is very clear that New Moon is targetted at ‘Young Adults’ (YA, yes they have an acronym for it). The author of the series, Stephenie Meyer, has confessed that she changed the plot of the sequel to the first book when she found out that Twilight was going to be marketed specifically to young adults. She, therefore, did not graduate the female protagonist from high school, as she had intended to. Since the series already has such a targetted audience, the outsiders’ opinion would probably matter little anyway. That is probably why it raked in a cool $704 million at the worldwide box office, showing how effective Hollywood marketing really is.
New Moon starts off with an eerie mass of people wearing red hoods walking in some kind of a weird procession, as Bella (Kristen Stewart) emerges in a very filmy hush (tensed face, flowing hair, dramatic pose, etc) only to be transported to some field with an old woman standing in the middle, who as it turns out is her own reflection in a mirror that comes out of nowhere. Her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) stands lovingly beside her, not a day old since a hundred years. Of course it’s a dream (no points for guessing, in fact if someone were to give you points for guessing while watching this movie, that someone has a very bad deal on his hands). The whole film is weaved around Bella’s insecurities about growing old compared to the ever-perfect Edward never growing old a bit and how the mortal-vampire romance might, if ever, work out, with a few things in between. There are some surprises here and there, a few sleek action sequences. But then that’s that.
Edward Cullen is, to be fair, not much of a character to work with for an actor. And even if deep love and vampire dilemmas are no stale things to pull out strong emotions, the marketing factor squashes it to the ground. Pattinson, it seems thus, does what he is supposed to do. He stands there, with a mysterious, creepy look that radiates a bright shining wheat-white-light and delivers hollow dialogues with the passion of a vampire in love. The camera longingly stares at him for eternity. He is essentially a boy with bad genes who is trying as hard as he can to be good. It is no rocket science to figure out why teen-aged girls would gush over him. Kristen Stewart also tries her best to come of age with an odd romance and with her friendship with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Lautner, it must be said though, has done a credible job here, even when forced to stay shirtless in the coldest of rains.
The movie might probably suck your brains out, but your blood will flow in the most leisurely pace. You could still try it out if you are a YA, though.
n Aayush Niroula
Twilight: New Moon
Director: Chris Weitz
Starring: Robert Pattinson,
Kristen Stewart
1 star
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