Twilight recycled, now with 90% more werewolves!

Rating: 3/10 (3 April 2010)

First off, I'm a guy, so before you completely disregard this review let me say that I am trying my hardest to review this in a neutral manner. So, infuriating fan-girl hate aside, let's get this review going...
New Moon opens up with the most drawn out title sequence since Terminator. Coincidentally, this ridiculously slow moment sums up the movie pretty well (although it is infinitely fun to yell "EW MOON!!" as the letters show up). Anyway, New Moon quickly insults its audience with some truly terrible acting (Bella has only one facial expression, I swear to God) and plot, which culminates in Edward breaking up with Bella. The audience is then subjected to a criminal amount of teenage angst as Bella wallows in her sorrow until she *finally* starts to fall in love with Jacob. Hysterically, Jacob and Bella have more chemistry than Edward and Bella ever did.
Soon, it becomes pretty obvious that New Moon is a retread of the first Twilight. Bella falls in love with mysterious boy, she slowly realizes that he is a werewolf (and is amazed that he radiates heat from his body - which is better than sparkling in the sunlight I suppose), hangs out with him despite all the dangers and even comes home to meet the "pack".
This redundancy is finally abated about an hour and a half into the movie when Alice finally shows up and says that Edward's going to commit suicide because he thinks Bella is dead. "Oh my god!" you say, "It's just like Romeo and Juliet!" Bingo. However, she saves him just in time, and we get introduced to the Volturi (basically the vampire mafia?). Somehow, they fail to come across as sinister, until the end when they slaughter an entire tour group (including children!!!!) off screen.
Anyway, Edward and Bella return home, Jacob gets jealous and Edward asks Bella to marry him. Curtains. It's about this point that the viewer realizes that they just wasted 2 hours of their time.
New Moon commits some major cardinal sins which utterly destroy it. First off is the already-mentioned redundancy - while the romantic angle is actually better done in New Moon, it's hard to ignore the fact that it's a re-skinning of a movie I already saw (and didn't like either). Second (and worst of all), New Moon is literally 2 hours of set-up. Nothing happens. At least Twilight had a story - New Moon neuters itself by setting things up for Eclipse (which, in itself, is mostly set-up for Breaking Dawn). So you are quite literally sitting through 2 boring hours, waiting for something to happen, and then being baffled when nothing does.
So in summary, even if you can ignore the terrible acting and plot, New Moon is brought down by redundancy and the fact that it is nothing but set-up. It's nothing but a gratuitous soft-core porno flick for chicks.
Anyway if you don't care about my opinion on New Moon then fine, whatever, go watch the movie. See if I care.