Drag, drag, drag, big face, soulful glance, red lips, slouch, pine, pine, pine, drag, drag, drag

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2009)

The Twilight Saga [2]: New Moon (2:10, PG-13) — Other: Romance, biggie, sequel, OSIT romantics
In The Grand Jubilee (1981), the middle book of Suzette Haden Elgin's Ozark Fantasy Trilogy, we meet Responsible of Brightwater, age 15. Her far-future world is run mainly by the grannies, who disdain men as hapless tools of testosterone poisoning and who can think of no more contemptuous put-down of any woman than to say "She just can't cope." Young Responsible need not be concerned that anyone would ever think that of her, as she is highly competent as well as responsible.
In contrast, we have Bella Swan, 3 years older than Responsible as this movie begins, a hapless drip, slouching thru life without direction or visible competence at anything except mindless devotion, mooniness, and wounded-doe looks. I kept wanting to shake her and say "For goodness sake, girl, stand up straight! Get a grip!".
But no, Bella (Kristen Stewart) has been abandoned by her One True Love, the 109-year-old teenage vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) because (a) he fears that his presence will bring her danger, (b) he dreads staying young as she ages, and (c) the latter can be avoided only if she becomes a vampire too, but that would cost her soul. So he bails, and she spends endless hours pining soulfully away, interrupted only occasionally by phantasmal images of Edward warning her against the various stupid decisions to which she seems prone.
Things brighten up for Bella a bit when she renews her acquaintance with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a 16-year-old Indian lad who attends school on the nearby reservation. They spend a lot of time hanging out together in the most platonic manner imaginable. It gives away nothing you didn't already know to say that Jacob (like many other young men of his tribe) is a werewolf, and these guys have tempers that sometimes make them as dangerous as vampires around a paper cut.
Drag, drag, drag, big face, drag, drag, pine, pine, pine, soulful glance, big face, soulful glance, overripe lips, slouch, big face, pine, drag, drag, drag.
Bella finally reconnects with Edward in Italy, where he's gone to ask for death at the hands of the Vulturi (vampire aristocracy), having been misled into thinking Bella is dead. (Any echoes of the opening references to Romeo and Juliet being, I'm sure, purely coincidental.) Here we encounter Michael Sheen, the Alcibiades of the undead, moonlighting (heh) from his role as king werewolf in the Underworld series to switch sides and serve here as Aro, duke of the vampires.* Aro is suitably oily and sinister, and his investigation of Bella reveals that she isn't subject to any of the normal vampire powers (such as Alice's precognition or Jane's telekinesis, heretofore unsuspected talents in the vampiric repertoire). This is our 1st glimmer of any degree of competence on Bella's part.
Director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg spend no significant time reintroducing the characters, evidently figuring (probably correctly) that 99.99% of the people attending this movie had already seen Twilight and/or read the books. But this leads to a curious distancing from the characters. They remain beautiful, but it's harder to identify with them, and the innate interest of the basic plot doesn't suffice to offset this tepidity, let alone the glacial pacing.
FWIW, I gave Twilight a 7, and this one gets a 5 mainly out of inertia and good will, but the series is headed the wrong way; #3 (Eclipse, due out June 30 next year) needs to pick up the pace to avoid total snoozification.
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*If the 2 vampire vs. werewolf franchises ever get into trial by combat over rights to Sheen, I'd put my money on Kate Beckinsale over Kristen Stewart any day; Kate can cope!