Beautiful people, big box office, zero story

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2011)

Okay here it is, New Moon is not unwatchable (thought some parts come close). Twilight was a bit better mostly cause it had some direction. This one is severely unfocused, with a plot that denies motivation and has lazy acting across the board...well not quite.
New Moon may have one edge over its predecessor which is that Taylor Launter puts more into the game than Rob Pattinson. At times, it feels like Jacob may be the better match for Bella. Their interaction which takes up the majority of the movie in fact, feels less broody than the Bella/Edward connection. Unfotunately, around the beginning of the third act we grow out of Jacob almost as fast as we grow into him. Wheras Edward is quite blatantly shy, Jacob by contrast is angry. The reasons for this however seem largely unjustified by the story. Like all bad stories, this one advances by making up its own rules on the spot, resulting in a movie that makes very little sense.
I'm truly not sure what it is about the Twilight saga that demands such a plastic style of acting. Why is everyone so lazy about this? it actually degrades the quality of the material. If this is the kind of Romantic chemistry that sells on the market (a chemistry where two people act like kissing is more pain than pleasure) then Romance itself could be a dying genre.
But perhaps that is an overstatement. New Moon gave me something to watch on TV when there was nothing else on, I wouldn't recommend it for any other purpose.