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I can sum up my review of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” in one sentence: If you enjoyed “Twilight” when you saw it last year, you’ll like “New Moon” even more.
“New Moon” is what it is, and what it purports to be — a silly, over-the-top, slightly angsty teen romance movie. Take it, or leave it.
The movie follows the continuing saga of high school senior Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who is in love with brooding 109-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who looks like he’s 17 and still attends high school with the other members of his coven, for some odd reason.
Unfortunately for Bella (and, really, fortunately for audiences), after Edward’s vampire brother Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) tries to eat Bella when she gets a paper cut, Edward decides that Bella would be safer without the Cullen clan around. They leave, and Bella broods and cries and screams and generally throws an impressively self-indulgent hissy-fit about the whole thing.
Eventually, thank goodness, she starts to get over herself a little bit, and realizes that when she does daring things, she hears Edward’s voice and see’s ghostly images of him. To keep seeing him, she enlists the help of Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a local Quileute teen who lives on the nearby reservation. Jacob and his sculpted abs help distract Bella from her teen angst over Edward as he helps her fix up a motorcycle (another way to try to see ghost-Edward). But, it turns out that Jacob has a big, supernatural secret too — most people probably already know from the movie’s trailer, but I won’t spoil it here. Anyway, as Jacob gets sucked into his own little world and leaves drama queen Bella to her own devices, Bella decides to jump off a cliff into the ocean. Edward, consequently, thinks Bella is dead and plans to commit suicide with the help of the Volturi, the creepy governing body of the vampires in Italy.
“New Moon” is a better-paced, funnier and generally better movie than “Twilight.” The expanded role of Jacob Black and his rough-and-tumble Quileute brothers is a welcome change from the “all brooding vampires, all the time” feel of the first movie. In fact, good-looking 17-year-old Taylor Lautner steals the show as Jacob, and he made me smile nearly every time he came on the screen. That fact that we see less of Edward brooding is a bonus, too.
“Twilight” as a whole, and “New Moon” in particular, really works better as a movie than a book, which doesn’t happen much in novel-to-screen adaptions. Watching it as a movie, I didn’t have to slog through the flowery descriptions and Bella’s repetitive, whiny thoughts, and the story is trimmed and tightened into a pretty nice little package.
In the end, though, it’s still “Twilight,” and if over-the-top teen romance is not your genre, you’d do well to stay far, far away from “New Moon.” It’s a fun piece of cinematic fluff, and a perfect movie when you’re looking for a guilty pleasure.
Jenny’s Take: See it before it leaves theaters, if “Twilight” is up your alley.
(Rated PG-13 for some violence and action. Runs 130 minutes.)
For more on Jenny’s opinion on “New Moon” and other pop culture fun, take a peek at Jenny’s blog at www.fwdailynews.com/jenny.
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