All this week I purposely stayed away from the spoilers, the leaked clips, the early reviews, the 3 a.m. tweets, and the raving fangirl Twihards in socialmedialand. I wanted to see New Moon without my already low opinion of Stephenie Meyer and her ilk tainting my experience. So tonight I cast aside the Twilulz and gave New Moon a chance.
I want my $10.00 back.
New Moon started badly, ended badly, with plenty of suck in between. Now, I realize The Twilight Saga isn’t exactly profound literature. I also realize I’m about ten years older than this franchise’s target audience. But I also know the difference between good and bad movies, and New Moon is a terrible film. The Twihards must be happy, though. If they were hoping for a perfect smoldering-glare-by-smoldering-glare translation of the book, New Moon delivers.
It’s not like the concept of vampires versus werewolves is anything new, neither is the injection of a trite love triangle. But when you take already-ridiculous subject matter and try to turn it into a serious film, usually one of two things happens: 1) You get something akin to Underworld. 2) Hilarity. New Moon collapsed under the weight of its own attempt at being serious. There were some moments when I felt like I was watching One Life to Live. At other times, an after-school special. Sure, I laughed during the parts where I was supposed to laugh. There were plenty of intentionally funny moments peppered throughout the film, and these I enjoyed. But I knew the movie was bad when I couldn’t stop laughing at the serious parts. I wasn’t alone, either. I heard snorts and stifled giggles all around me.
I found these bits especially lol-worthy:
- Grandma Swan’s thousand yard stare.
- Edward Cullen’s fondness for walking in slow-motion.
- CGI werewolves emote surprisingly well. Almost as good as Falcor in the Neverending Story!
- Throngs of ambiguously gay shirtless wolfmen.
- Camera shots that make everything seem EPIC.
- Bella and Edward frolicking through the woods. Yes, frolicking.
- The Volturi’s drag makeup.
- Bella is evidently a Mac geek. No wonder I hate her.
And those were just some of the good parts. Aside from making me laugh inappropriately, the film’s music was another sore point. The score seemed so out of place in most scenes, it was almost laughable. In other places it was weirdly silent. I really missed Carter Burwell’s beautiful Bella’s Lullaby theme from the first movie; I wish they had reprised it here. In fact there was no trace of any kind of theme at all in New Moon; just the occasional soap opera-ish strings (you know, during the “smoldering glares“) and and endless playlist of sedate, instantly forgettable indie songs. This is one illegal download I’ll skip.
New Moon has a running time of 2 hours. By the 90 minute mark, I was praying for it to end. Say what you want about Catherine Hardwicke’s gritty directing style, but she did a hell of a lot better on Twilight than Chris Weitz on New Moon. It’s sad that I have to say this, but New Moon makes Twilight—a much lower budget film, I might add—look like an Oscar nominee. I don’t suppose it’s entirely Chris Weitz’s fault, though, considering the source. New Moon is a shitty book, ergo, New Moon is a shitty movie. I guess you can’t polish a turd.
God, I hate being right all the time!
