Hollywood Wasting Money on Vamp Tears

Rating: 3/10 (22 July 2010)

I spent the day doing writing and design work while watching movies. A normal day. First I watched 2046 (my first time seeing it), then Me and You and Everyone We Know (my first time seeing it in at least a year, maybe two), then I'm Not There (first time since the DVD was first released). All three were great, even if I was only half watching while I worked. And no, I don't sleep very much.
As the night settled in I started to get those oh-so-special cabin fever feelings. So I called up my younger sister, who had been wanting me to go check out New Moon with her, and we decided to meet up and see the film. The two of us aren't all that much alike, truthfully, but we both love film/movies. She collects DVDs, loves going to the theater and at one time worked at a theater. Same stuff going on over here, though to much geekier, obsessive compulsive degrees.
The film was ... ummmm. Pretty bad. Awful, even. There's this group of Native American youths who run around together doing some really serious outlaw-type like swimming in cold water and eating big muffins. One of the guys gets mad and destroys his girlfriend's face ... then she makes him some really big muffins (nope, that wasn't a pun). She understands his rage because, you see, these dudes are actually werewolves (I suppose that's why their shirts are off in chilly Oregon, but I don't really understand the logic). They do not remind of Michael J. Fox. They turn into very large wolves that hunt vampires and fix motorbikes and go to private schools.
All through the film I was laughing as I kept running through all the SNL skits I could easily write spoofing this blockbuster. Too easy, but I just love the idea of these Native American guys walking home from private school, fully dressed and trying to decide if they should hang out or go separate ways before they go home and get all mechanical. Once they decide that, yes, they're going to hang out, they all take off their shirts and go eat some muffins and look at the girl with the chewed up face. One of them even decides that he wants to fight the 100 lb. heroine (Bella Swan, duh) at one point.
The bare chest stuff wasn't the only funny business going on. Edward, the biggest pu$$y of an anti-hero ever (sorry for saying the word "pu$$y," but I figured this was the perfect opportunity to play my once-per-decade Pu$$y Card), keeps appearing out of nowhere, looking incredibly brooding. Then he cries. Then he tries to kill himself in front of a perfectly happy parade. Then he gets his tush beat by a vampire played by an awful actor (obviously cast for his fake fighting skills). Then he goes home and wants to play house again with the Bella Swan. Then Taylor Swift's werewolf boyfriend takes off his shirt and tries to fight the pu$$y. Don't get too excited, though, the dudes don't even fight over the girl. In fact, the film just kind of ends. And this is not exactly the kind of story that you can end without a payoff. Actually, it's hardly a story at all.
Directed by Chris Weitz, who I was once SERIOUSLY rooting for (About A Boy and Chuck & Buck were both excellent early works), New Moon is something of a trapper keeper film. That is, if they were still making trapper keepers, those awesome contraptions would sell like crazy if you put the dudes with no shirts on one side and the big pu$$y on the other.
Oh, drag ... I'm outta pu$$ys on my Pu$$y Card. Guess that means I should go watch Russian Dolls and pass out.