Slightly better than the first, but a far cry from being any good

Rating: 4/10 (28 July 2010)

The reason it took me so long to review this film is because I wanted to wait for it to show on the movie network, as my interest in it was next to none. I got bored today and watched this movie and they basically took all of the redeeming qualities of the first film and removed it.
The most interesting part of the story was the relationship between Jacob and Bella, however it began to get tiresome after Jacobs third attempt to reach out to Bella, and then it just wouldn't stop. Edward and Bella's relationship is totally annoying to me, as there is no apparent passion between the two when they're interacting with each other. Close talking with convenient lighting does not convey passion.
I tried watching this with the notion that this is a children's movie, and I guess its good enough for kids if they decide to like it. However the subject matter leads to a rhetoric that is heavily politicized. I do not wish to discuss that here.
I understand that fans of the Twilight novels wanted this film to do what the previous one could not. Which is to do the novel justice. The script writing was not thoughtful enough to even come close to representing even a poorly written novel. The dialogue was that of an after school teen TV series. You can tell that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson tried a bit harder to convey emotion. However Pattinson is too caught up in the image he wishes to portray as a vampire instead of becoming his character for the film, and Stewart is likely in a quandary. The acting was so bad in the first one, but there is a huge fan base for Twilight. How does she make the character better without straying too far from what was done in the first film? That being said, Bella's character was ruined before they even started filming New Moon. Unless they rebooted the series, there was no saving this film.
What bothers me is that I know these actors can do much better. I've seen Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart do some good work in the past, and it seems they've both let the Twilight attention get to their heads. Their acting is pretentious and dull in New Moon. I hate seeing scenes with them together because I'm numb with boredom every time they are.
This movie was slightly better than the first as a MOVIE, not as a representation of the novel. I have no comment about the novels because I have never read them, nor do I intend to. Vegetarian vampires, and the struggle of two people who want desperately to be together is not really my thing and quite frankly it's the oldest story ever, are not really my thing. How about every religious person and their desire to be with a God who may or may not exist? That's how old this story is.