Secure Immaturity

***For my review of the original Twilight, go here.***

I’ve decided to go easy on this one. Really. . .I am. I’ve liked a few films that some people would find completely embarrassing to be attending. I’ve stood up and cheered when a Klingon Bird of Prey was destroyed and cried my eyes out when those midgets in that Rings thing went in that boat with that old guy with white hair. I’ve worshipped things. . .and I have to realize that the Twilight ‘Saga’ is the same thing for little girls and retarded people that Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or whatever was to me but has more abs.

So, like I said, I’m going to go easy on this movie, that being the second film in the ’saga’ called New Moon (sidebar: why was the first film called Twilight but had an apple on the cover and this one is called New Moon but has a flower dripping blood? I mean, the vampires sparkle and a flower has nothing to do with the moon, right? Why not just call it Full Moon. . .that would make more sense in regards to the fashion models that play wolves in this flick. Anyways. . .). Truth be told. . .it ain’t a terrible movie. Sure, it has monstrously awful acting, its share of terrible CGI, and the masturbatory need to show guys taking their shirts off or walking in slow motion to suicide inducing indie music. But it also has wolves eating people, people smashing people’s skulls into marble floors, a dude with red eyes who creepily hangs out with Dakota Fanning and two other miserable looking sad sacks, and a hot red headed woman who just runs around a lot. Oh, and the production value is lightyears ahead of the first film. So, yeah, not bad.

Well, instead of breaking a couple of my friend’s spawn’s hearts by talking about how large Robert Patterson’s (sorry, that’s how we know him in our world) jaw is or how I want to rub my face in Anna Kendrick’s wonderful bosom, I’m just going to talk about the plot of the film and let the reader decide if I liked the film or not and, for those who haven’t seen it, if they would like to see it. We all know the strange rape-fantasy for girls (for dummies) that was the first book and film was pretty awful. It’s main star, Kristen Stewart, seemed to be grunting through a painful bowel movement or was the first person to contract down syndrome AFTER birth during the whole thing and there was a Yao Ming looking vampire WHO FUCKING SPARKLED. Jesus. Just explaining it makes my head hurt. Would New Moon do better?

Well, it got off to a great start. There is this eighteen minute sequence where we see a full moon (see, what’s this new moon crap?) and the title New Moon slowly comes across the screen. Then we are introduced to our much improved heroine Bella (Kristin Stewart). Before I continue, I just want to make it clear that for some reason I really want to sleep with Kristen Stewart. She is so bizarre looking and strange to watch that I HAVE to know what that odd creature is like in the sack. I mean, will she pull her hair back behind her ears and squint at me while we’re doing the beast with two backs? Will a moment of pleasure look like a moment of torment (just as her comedic skills in any movie she’s in look like a scene from a torture porn) and will a moment of dramatic subtlety look like a sense of comic ingenuity? These are the things I think about in my fucked up world. . .sorry. . .anyways). We meet Bella.

First she’s running in this Europey square where all these people in red robes are walking around. Then she’s in a fountain and then in a meadow. . .I think. . .see, I was holding my cranky child the entire time and every now and then I had to make sure she was sleeping okay, etc. Anyways, suddenly she’s an old broad and The Man with Iron Jaw, Mr. Sparkly Vampire himself, shows up and kisses her hand and says happy birthday. Bella wakes up. Based on her reaction, I think she remembered a potato was in the microwave but apparently she is distraught that she will grow old and Edward Cullen (Sparkly) will remain all pale and dark looking and such and then eventually move on, or something (question: wouldn’t an old ass Bella love to ‘rob the craddle’ as such and have a stud boyfriend who looks 18 when she’s 86 with a walker? C’mon, think this through Bella. A man in his sexual prime for a lifetime servicing your old, nasty ass every night until death. C’mon!)

So Bella mopes around at school where everyone is happy its her birthday and give her lots of congratulations and presents and shit but she just looks sad and tells people to piss off. Then Sparkly shows up. The Twilight Saga mentions each vampire has a specific gift (like Alice can see the future, the doctor-dad can be a vegetarian, the one brother guy can install audio equipment, and Jasper can look cracked out) and Edward’s is, besides the sparkling, able to walk in slow motion, suspending time around him as Death Cab for Cutie plays. It’s a pretty neat skill. Anyways, Sparkly shows up and sniffs Bella’s forehead a lot. This is love, I guess. Anyways, the Native American kid from the first movie shows up but he’s wearing a muscle T and he’s called Mr. Jacob Biceps. Anyways, he gives Bella a present (which she scolds him for) and their interaction makes Edward all sensitive and cranky and they go to class.

The whole time, the movie eludes to Romeo and Juliet, as if it will be important in the end *wink* and Bella is impressed that Sparkly can recite Shakespeare. This leads to (or was led by) a discussion of age. Sparkly is really 108 and he’s dating a barely legal teen whose 18. But Bella feels she is 36 because she has a Hamlet poster on the wall and listens to really depressing music. Later she’ll be dick teasing a 16 year old. This movie is weird. Anyways. . .sorry. . .got off track. There’s a lot of scenes where Sparkly and Bella sniff each other and emote and stuff and eventually Bella goes to a party!

At the party she cuts her finger. Jasper, the crack head vampire, goes berserk and tries to kill Bella, a sentiment I was actually rooting for in the first film, but Edward stops him and decides to relocate completely so that his crackhead brother won’t kill her. My favorite part of this is that Sparkly takes Bella out into the middle of nowhere, tells her he’s leaving and is breaking up with her, and then does that speed walk-run blurry thing and leaves her there all alone in the middle of the rainy forest. What a dick move! She doesn’t need a douche like that.

The next part is kind of weird. She trips on something and decides to go to sleep in the ground. Even though she is only gone for 15 minutes, her dad, Charlie, the police chief, decides to mount a rescue mission. But luckily, this yellow eyed shadowed horse was watching Bella. Then a shirtless Amber Crombie and Fitch model gives Bella back to Charlie and Bella sits in her room for four months wearing the same clothes and looking blankly at things. Her father isn’t really concerned since she kind of stares blankly at everything anyways. Though the endless sitting is a bit depressing.

Well, since Bella likes to use people, she goes back to welcome mat Jacob Pec-Abs, and asks him to make her a few dirt bikes (see, when Bella was distraught she decides that she needs to be a little dangerous. . .so she hops on a bike with Joss Whedon and drives at speeds approaching the speed limit. During this time, of course, her dick ex-boyfriend, who broke up with her AND left her to die, keeps popping up in this really goofy ghost scenes and tells her to be careful. Dude, you left her to die in the fucking woods. At the very least she’ll have some poison ivy itches. Stop fucking around with her head. Dick). So Jacob decides to fix the bikes because he fixes cars and he has abs.

So a new friendship blossoms and an attraction happens and some exposition occurs where Jacob Flex-Maximus talks about other Native American dudes who don’t wear shirts, cliff jump, and, well, that’s pretty much it. Jacob and Bella go to a movie and Jacob wants to be with Bella but Bella likes Sparkly still and only wants Jacob to fix her bikes and be nice to her and comfort her when she’s down. . .she doesn’t want to do anything for him. He gets mad and joins those cliff jumpers.

He comes back later without his shirt on and a more stylish, catalog required hair cut and he and Bella talk in the rain and stuff. Later, Bella wanders around moping and bumps into one of those aliens from Battlefield Earth. The alien guy says he’s going to eat Bella or karate chop her or something because this red haired hot chick is mad that Bella kinda sorta killed her mate in the last movie. Anyways, these large horse-wolves show up and start eating the black alien guy and he dies. We cut back to Jacob’s house. His new crew of cliff jumping horse-wolves are mad because Bella is cramping Jacob’s guy time. One horse-wolf doesn’t like Bella because Bella punches him (I can’t remember why) and he turns to a wolf and Jacob hears it and jumps over a fence and turns into a wolf and they fight and they all hate Bella except Jacob but the wolves invite Bella over for muffins at this chick’s house. . .she has a scared face. Wait. . .what?

Well, the wolves are really hungry and decide Bella ain’t so bad. They warn her about vampires and they chase that hot red headed one at one point. I’m a little lost here because a)my daughter woke up from my non-stop laughing at ghost Sparkly who keeps showing up to annoy Bella and constantly remind her that he broke up with her AND won’t stop annoying her, b)I was simply dumbfounded by the fact that only three minutes of the film had actually gone by up to the wolf muffin scene, and c)the sudoku puzzle I was working on was really hard.

So. . .Jacob mentions some kind of treaty between wolves and vampires and Alice ends up showing up at Bella’s house and explaining how there is this strange other movie where Tony Blair runs this panel of three who kill vampires who want to die or something. It’s really stupid and has nothing to do with THIS movie and they’re called the Vultures or something. Anyways, Jacob finally gets some alone time and almost kisses Bella but Sparkly calls to fuck things up yet again and Jacob gets mad and gets all wolf jealous and stalks around. Sparkly was in Barcelona or Rio De Janeiro or some studio with a green screen and looked miserable. . .he was so sad he himself broke up with Bella that he wants her back.

Bella, being completely disloyal to Jacob, decides to leave him (ya know, the cute hunk of man flesh with the 12 pack who always treats her nice and asks nothing in return and is actually played by an actor who has SOME chemistry with the heroine), and go to the Vulture place and stop Edward from killing himself since he thinks Bella’s dead (oh, I forgot to mention. The horse wolves chase the red headed hottie around a bit, a random Native American guy has a heart attack, and Bella jumps off a cliff and because she is a moron, backs up into a rock and hits her head, sorry. . .baby pooped on me at this point I think).

So, Bella and Alice ditch Forks and the movie that makes sense and join this Gothic Italian movie where people in red masks and secret red eyed vampire councils meet to kill people. . .I guess. The deal is, since the Vultures want Sparkly’s special power(s) (they emphasize more then one and though I concur (the sparkly face, the slow motion walking), I don’t understand what they want those qualities for in the grand scheme of things) they won’t kill him so he’s going to commit this horrible offense and go sparkle at humans so they’ll know he’s a vampire (yeah right. . .I’d probably think he escaped a gay pride parade before I thought he was a sparkly, thin, douchebag vampire; I mean, vampire would be liked the 86th thing on my list if I saw a sparkly dude in the street walking in slow motion to indie rock). Bella will stop him because she is alive (duh) and she loves him and all that.

She does manage to stop him but the Vultures are pissed about something and they go into a council chamber and talk for six hours. Dakota Fanning shows up and makes Sparkly feel pain and the Vultures discover Bella is impervious to vampire powers. Somehow this leads to Edward fighting all these other guys ad getting his head smashed into a marble floor (awesome). Tony Blair likes that Bella is human, I guess, and lets them all live since Bella will be a vampire someday (or so he’s told). This seems like a stupid way to let someone go. I’ve never seen a bad guy listen to someone say ’she’ll be a vampire someday so let her live’ and the villain goes, ‘um, sure’.

So we go back to Forks and the original movie. Jacob Hunk-Glutes and Edward have a little face to face conversation about Bella’s future vampire date and he stalks off since he realizes he’s been rejected by Bella for the guy who broke her heart and left her to die in the forest earlier. I’d be pissed too. So Bella and Sparkly keep doing that sniffy thing and Sparkly asks for her hand in marriage and the movie ends.

So that was New Moon. I liked this one part where the Vultures killed a whole slew of tourists. It was neat. I also liked the horse-wolves. And I actually liked Taylor Lautner’s chemistry with Bella. Since Sparkly McHard Jaw is not in 80% of the film’s 326 minute running time, Jacob seems like the better dude. Why does Bella like this douchbag vampire? Jacob goes in for kisses while Sparkly is always sniffing Bella. . .it’s odd. I guess we’ll never know the attraction though I’m sure 85 thirteen year old girls could tell me right now why Edward is better then Jacob.

So I guess you know what ‘team’ I’m on then. I like this Jacob guy. He’s cool enough for me to see Eclipse (that’s the third Twilight film that has a red ribbon on it. . .I’m sure it’s related somehow). And New Moon did have pretty bad acting, lots of laughable moments, a mixture of awful and excellent CGI, a pretty terrible script (based on an equally terrible book), a tortuously long running time, a lot of mythological elements that were beyond retarded, and way too many indie rock songs, but something about it was interesting enough for me to watch the full 6-part documentary on the second DVD disc. Am I a fan? Hell no. . .but New Moon at least felt like a real cinematic movie and for every moment of outright unintentional hilarity, there was a sequence of decent action or genuine romantic chemistry between the leads. I’ll take that and run with it. Many will be shocked to discover that I’ll go see Eclipse. . .eventually. . .

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