Twilight Saga New Moon

O Twilight, how tweens and twi-moms love the.  New Moon was a definite step up from it's predecessor Twilight, and audiences around the country agree.  In it's first night it racked up $140.7 million making it the 3rd most attended midnight showing in the history of movies behind The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3, and just in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (that's ridiculous, and twice as much as Twilight).  What is more surprising is that that movie only took $50 million to make.  They made a profit in it's premiere hours.  So far the movie has sold close to $220 million in tickets.

Now I bought my ticket about 2 months in advance on fandango and was right there for the midnight showing.  I loved the movie, but that's because I love the story.  So saying that, I will try my best to give an objective review.  Here we go...

New Moon is the sequel to Twilight, and the movie opens in one of Bella's (Kristen Stewart) dreams on the dawn of her birthday.  She doesn't want to get older since her vampire love, Edward (Robert Pattinson) can't age.  The Cullens throw Bella a birthday party, and all hell breaks loose when she gets surprisingly bloody paper cut that sends Jasper on the attack.  Edward decides it's in Bella's best interest to leave and let her live a normal life.  This sends Bella into a depression where she can only find peace in her friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner).  But Jacob starts acting weird and disappears for a while.  It turns out that Jacob has a special Quillette gene that turns him into a Werewolf who hunts vampires.  Bella is still hung up on Edward and sees visions of him whenever she does something dangerous.  Edward learns of one of her daredevil attempts, thinks she's died and decides that he no longer wants to live.  Now it's up to Bella: stay with Jacob or rescue Edward.

New Moon had a new director, Chris Weitz, who also directed films like The Compass.  Depending on what review you read, he either did a horrible or a terrific job.  I'm following the latter.  He did a much better job of portraying vampires running, and he was good for all the animation that they used.  The acting was better too, but only slightly.  I'm not sure if any director can get Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson to jell on screen.  If they do have a relationship, why don't they translate that to the screen.  On the other hand, Kristen and Taylor Launter had tons of chemistry.  The feel of the movie was much warmer, but the pacing was off for most of it.  Drama was drawn out where it didn't necessarily need to be.  I didn't notice this the first time cause I was so amped to see it, but the second time it was pretty clear.  Lautner was topless for half the movie which will have young girls (and cougar moms) squealing everywhere.

Rating: 2.7 ★ stars (out of 5)

Recommendation: Boys, take your girls to this movie (unless you are insecure about your body). This is the yet another perfect tween movie, but if your not a fan already, I'm not convinced that the films will do it for you.