11.20.2009

New Moon....New Low


New Moon is bad. No, really. It's honestly the most ridiculously cheeseball and over-the-top melodrama I may have ever seen. Megan and I were giggling through a lot of it. It's just so blatantly horrible-romance-novel dialogue (about 10 too many lines of "You are my only reason for living") and between the shirtless underage boys, predictable smell-the-fart acting from Edward and Bella, and Edwards floating head through most of it, it's just embarrassing. And I actually liked the first movie--I didn't love it--but I liked it.

Perhaps the reason I didn't like New Moon is because I don't love the books. So if you like the books, the movie is a pretty accurate portrayal. It shows a really weak teenage girl who apparently can't be happy unless she has a boyfriend. Oh and she literally can't survive unless she has a guy there to protect her. And my favorite aspect, the only way she can be happy is to change herself to be like the guy she loves. A really great role model for teenage girls...

Anyway, back to the movie...It wasn't all bad. I really liked the soundtrack, and the sequence with Victoria was really cool. The werewolves are a nice balance to the vampires and bring a little more warmth to a lot of the scenes. Charlie was good. Dakota Fanning was probably the best actor in the whole thing but she only had a few lines. The scenes in Italy were a nice change of pace and there were some funny moments--mostly provided by Bella's high school friends. And it was just fun to be a part of the hype and fanfare. But there were a lot of really bad moments. The scene where Edward is about to reveal himself in the square and you can see that they had to use makeup to give him muscle definition, and the absolute pinnacle of cheeseball was a flash-forward moment from Alice--I honestly thought I might have fallen asleep and was dreaming because no one in their right mind would show that and not be joking (you'll know it when you see it). I think the idea behind the Twilight series is great. A girl falling for a vampire, it's creative and fun. But I guess it's just the fact that the central relationship drives me crazy is why I can't wrap my brain around why this is so popular.

Sorry to offend anyone, to each their own. I'm sure sitting next to Megan, who was laughing about half the time, didn't help :) I know plently of people in my theater really liked it.