Where would Hollywood be without that old standby, the vampire-werewolf-schoolgirl love triangle?
As every Stephenie Meyer fan knows, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is the one where studly vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) dumps his human girlfriend, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), for her own safety, and she turns to old chum Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) for solace, unaware that he's a werewolf and therefore Edward's sworn enemy from way back.
What fans are about to find out is that critics, present company included, don't care much for this adaptation of the second in Meyer's Twilight series. And those fans won't give a fig what these critics have to say about their beloved Bella and her beastie-boy toys.
With Chris Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, The Golden Compass) taking over as director, the second movie has exactly what those fans want: Big, bouncy boy hair. Sculpted torsos everywhere. Teasing caresses of fingers on fingers, lips on lips. Love so deep and frenzied that the smitten would prefer to die than go on without the other. Torsos, did we mention torsos?
Most important, not just one, but two supernatural hunks snarling over the quivering carcass of a breathless, doe-eyed young woman.
For anyone who has not sworn the blood oath of undying allegiance to all things Twilight, here are a few issues with New Moon: It's really two half-moons, or two halves of a movie that don't quite fit. Mopey teenage Bella has all the luster of, well, a mopey teenager. The real rivalry between the werewolves and vampires is to see which species can behave with greater preposterousness and pretension.
Finally, New Moon is boring, eternally so.
Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg returned to adapt the script, and New Moon shares its predecessor's brooding, diary-of-a-mad-girl tone.
Bella starts senior year in the worst way as Edward and his adopted family of sensitive new-age vampires pack up and move away.
Fans will rue the relatively scarce screen time for Pattinson, whose Edward still adores Bella but decides that he has to break things off so that he doesn't complicate their relationship by giving her a fatal hickey.
Months of pining and bad dreams eventually are eased for Bella as she starts hanging out with Jacob, who misses no opportunity to show off his Olympian pecs and abs.
Bella's timing stinks, though, because Jacob's just entering wolfman puberty. Suddenly, he's running with a pack of werewolf brethren in his American Indian tribe, and he pushes Bella away just as Edward did -- for her own protection.
Old vampire enemies are still preying on Bella, though, giving Jacob and his boys some bloodsuckers to fight. The visual effects of the guys transforming into wolves are disappointing. An American Werewolf in London did a much neater job of it almost 30 years ago.
Then New Moon veers back to the Cullens, as Bella races to Italy to save Edward, who has become a world-class moper himself.
There, they engage in a showdown with the Volturi, who are sort of the A-listers of the vampire world and as full of themselves as any spoiled Hollywood star.
Dakota Fanning, in a departure from her goodie-goodie persona, has a fleeting role as a Volturi bad girl.
The soap-opera melodrama of Stewart's, Pattinson's and Lautner's performances provides some unintentional laughs that lighten the movie's relentless gloom.
All three lovers are so joyless, it's hard to imagine why any of them would want to spend eternity together.
They're here for two more movies, though. And that sounds like a real eternity.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon is rated PG-13 for some violence and action. Running time: 130 minutes. ½ (out of four). Showing: Grand 18, Wynnsong 12, Carmike 10, Kernersville Countryside, Starmount, Liberty Twin and Creekside.
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