3 reviews

---

Andrea Hopkins December 8, 2009

An interesting question. It's not that one would have any difficulty understanding the plot - it aint Tolstoy. Most of the essential background details can be swiftly picked up by reading a few reviews (or, of course, the original book). It's more that you wouldn't necessarily understand why Bella is so desperately in love with Edward, (who unfortunately appears rather more of a big girl's blouse in this movie) that she would spurn the advances of the frankly gorgeous Jacob. The first movie is delicate, slow-moving, sensual - a deeply engaging portrayal of the intensity and uncertainty of first love, which really does linger in the mind. It's better than this one really. Plus you can now pick it up for a fiver in Tesco.

---

Andrea Hopkins November 25, 2009

This is by and large a very well-produced, well-written and splendidly performed movie, given that it's based on an incredibly silly story - a girl torn between her feelings for a vampire and a werewolf, who ideally would like to just rip one another to pieces. I totally get the whole 'vampires are a metaphor for the heartless autolysis of western civilisation' concept, but the movie is at least refreshingly free from any such post-modernist claptrap - it is in fact not about vampires and werewolves in any meaningful sense, it's simply a teen romance, about relationships between very attractive people.

Twilight was very much Robert Pattinson's movie, and New Moon is Taylor Lautner's. I imagine that all the hype surrounding his casting as Jacob was not entirely manufactured for publicity purposes - you can imagine the producers of the movie might well hesitate to place such a terrible burden on the shoulders of a seventeen year old boy, but I am here to tell you (having already seen it three times this weekend) that he carries it off magnificently. Quite apart from the physical magnificence, which is rightly shown off as much as possible, he is thoroughly convincing and deeply touching as the boy who wants what he can't have.

I'd also like to put in a good word for Kristen Stewart as Bella, whose deliberately understated delivery helps to ground some of the astounding silliness that escapes in the hands of more self-indulgent actors (like Michael Sheen).

There were some astonishing lapses of judgement on the part of the director - one scene in particular which had the entire audience hooting with derision even though they were mostly Twi-hards - but mostly, it's an excellent job and if you liked the first one you will certainly enjoy this.

Question: Does it matter if one has not seen the first one?

TwiCurious 6 Dec 2009