Alright, first and fore-most, let me state this: I know that I am not the demographic this movie was made for. I know that a lazy geek in his 20’s is not the prime audience for this movie. That being said, I am an avid movie goer, so I will be attacking this movie as a movie, not as a ridiculous romancey novely vampirey sad state of a concept. I swear… I’m not bias at all.
I shall begin at the beginning. This movie is a simple step up from its predecessor. It’s all around better. Of course, this is like stating that drowning is better than slowly dying of poison. While one is preferred, you still wind up dead in the end. It’s obvious from the get-go that the new director, Chris Weitz knew what he was getting himself into, and knew what would work… for the fan base. I’ve read the novels. I know the story, and from a reader’s perspective, there is no real let down here. It’s a direct translation from book to movie, the problem is, that translation doesn’t work.
This movie moves like a book. It’s delivered like a book. It’s paced and edited like a book. The acting was delivered as if they were reading straight from cue-cards off screen. To be honest, it was boring. If I wanted to reread the series, I go back home, sift through my fireplace, and try to piece together the books again. But this is a movie. It’s supposed to be a fairly fast paced, 2 hour long, joy ride. It’s the whole point of film; to cram more information into a small amount of time.
And let us discuss the acting. All around, everyone does a better job than last time, but it’s still not enough. The wooden delivery of Rob Patterson coupled with the still awkward stammering of Kristen Stewart makes for some very bad scenes. Luckily, this movie is also about the wolf boy, Jacob, played by Taylor Lautner. He’s a slightly better actor… if only slightly. The chemistry between Kristen and Taylor is also a bit more believable, but it’s still like seeing two plagued rats trying to moon at each other. Sadly, because of the popularity of the series, all the actors involved will get more work. However, because the series made their careers, they will never be able to live down the roles, unless some amazing movie comes out that I’m not expecting, and one of them somehow manages to pull a Dustin Hoffman like acting ability out of their hat.
The only things I can that was truly entertaining was, of course, the super CGI wolves. Yes, they’re pretty obviously computer animated. Yes, they’re in the middle of a crappy romance movie. But they looked damned cool. In fact, look to another Chris Weitz movie that, while being a bad movie in and of itself, had sweet CGI animals. The Golden Compass wasn’t a great movie, but the fight scene between the armored polar bears was phenomenal. So basically, they should now make a movie where these huge wolves fight armored polar bears. I see lucrative profits for all. The other thing I really enjoyed was the music. Suprisingly, the soundtrack managed to compliment the scenes very well, and while I still can wrap my head around the reasons that Thom Yorke has for lending his music to these horrible movies, his song especially went well. It’s odd. For a man who is more often than not against the main stream, he’s given away two of his songs to the series. It’s not like he needed the popularity boost. Confused? Yes, yes I am.
So the movie sucked. I’m a guy, it’s Twilight. I have a brain, it’s Twilight. End of story. 3 half naked men who disgrace badass monsters out of 10.
-Dave Q.
Current Music- “Set it off” by Girl Talk
