Twilight Part II: The Worst Vampire Movie Ever.

A few days ago in my review of Twilight, I forgot to mention the plot of the film, and this was done intentionally for two reasons: First - there's no real plot to the first movie because all it was dealing with was the courtship between Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and meeting the rest of the Cullen clan: Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli), mind reader Alice (Ashley Greene), Southern charmer Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), Debbie Downer Rosaline (Thirteen star Nikki Reed), and other people who really aren't that important to the story. Second - it was the least important part of why the first movie was such an incredible bore of an opener to a film series. New Moon, by contrast, has more going on in the sequel this time, and I will be talking about it because it actually pays a big part into why the second installment is by far, one of the worst sequels that I have ever seen. There are some sequels that get better with each viewing, much like a fine bottle of wine only tastes better with age (The Dark Knight, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Godfather: Part II, etc.). Some sequels you really thought were cool when you first saw them just don't hold up as time goes by (Iron-Man 2, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, X-Men: The Last Stand).  New Moon sucked when I first saw it in theaters, and it only got worse with each viewing after it. It's a feat that hasn't been accomplished since the atrocity that was Bad Boys II back in 2003, that's how terrible this piece of shit is.

How? How could New Moon be this bad? Well, it starts and it ends with our main characters, and one in particular:  Bella. Like I said before, she had little personality coming into the story and when Edward eventually leaves her 30 minutes into the second film, the point is driven home repeatedly that she has no sense of an identity when he leaves: she refuses to go out with friends she never really socialized with, she writes emails to Alice, even though she has left Forks along with her "family" and disconnected her account, and she squeals like a stuffed pig about to get carved up for the Christmas dinner (she's acting!). I should mention that Edward breaks it off to Bella in the middle of the fucking forest, leaving her to wander around looking for him, before laying down and crying her eyes out in the fetal position.

Get a fucking grip, woman!!!

Good. Fucking. God. I've never come across a more insecure and male-dependent female character in ages.  Look, breakups suck, but this....what teenage girl goes through this???? Won't Bella's dad be, I dunno, a fucking parent and tell her daughter that she needs to get away from it all and move on? To his credit he does tell her that he's had enough of her extreme moping and decides to send her back to live with her mom, but Bela persuades daddy dumbest that she's having a girl's night out and calls off the one-way ticket back to Florida. I don't know what's more pathetic in this instance: Bella being threatened with leaving Forks to get out of the damn house and start reconnecting her her girlfriends, or Papa Swan actually calling off the trip back to her mother's new residence all because she tells him is that one night out with the girls = her going back to normal! A night out with her shallow, valley girl buddy Jessica (Anna Kendrick, why are you in this movie?) turns into Bella getting a ride home from some bikers looking to score some jailbat. Really. Instead of just walking away, the ghost of Edward shows up to warn her not to do this. She does it anyway....just to he could notice her. I really wish I were making any of this up, but i'm not. Bella taking stupid, life-threatening  risks just so Edward's phantom can notice her.

Oh my God. I mean: Oh. My. God. That's right girls: if your boyfriend breaks it off with you and you're completely distraught over it, do what Bella does - become an adrenaline junkie and dive off cliffs until he sees the error of his ways and takes up back. And if you should end up dying...well, that'll teach him to leave you! I know i'm rambling at this point, but Bella honestly has to be one of the most infuriatingly awful characters in film history: she has no personality, no resemblance of an identity besides having a good-looking boyfriend, and neither the filmmakers nor the actor playing the lead character, go any deeper than what Meyer put on the page. The fact they want us to believe that she's the everyday girl that young ladies can relate to is really depressing because there are better, more fully rich female characters (Linda Hamilton's Sarah Conner; Sigorney Weaver's Ellen Ripley, Hilary Swank's Maggie Fitzgerald, Jennifer Lawerence's Katniss Everdeen)  that are 100 times more interesting and believable than K-Stew's Bella Swan.

That's supposed to be a werewolf? Lupin's transformation was more believable!

Enough of "her" and onwards with the rest of this terrible second installment: New Moon features new characters, most notably, Jacob Black (A godawful Taylor Lautner)  and his Chippendale models  tribe, the Wolfpack, who stand guard over Forks and are ever vigilant of vampires, the Cullen clan in particular. This would be an interesting point in the story if a) these people could act and bring some much-needed depth to the story, b) actually look like werewolves, not the oversized, pixilated mutts that you see above, and c) if director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Mellissa Rosenberg gave the Pack more to do than just be shameless eye candy to the mostly female audience! Yep, they're not even all that important to the story! Sure, there's a chase scene involving them and Victoria, but it doesn't go anywhere: she's not trying to go after Edward to take revenge for killing her lover in the first Twilight movie. It's there to give the boyfriends who were dragged by their girlfriends to watch this mess an action scene to nibble on (full disclosure: 3 minutes of an action scene isn't enough to sustain the men who were forced to see this, let alone an audience who may not be familiar with the source material or even watched the first movie, and are coming in completely blind!). Nope, Jacob's in love with Bella, and spends the majority of the film trying to be a good friend, and win her affections. They fix bikes together and take them out for a spin....without his shirt on. Jacob tends to her wounds...sans shirt. He even rescues her from jumping off said mentioned cliff earlier ..no shirt. Apparently, Jacob is allergic to polyester, cotton, and other fabrics that are used to make a t-shirt.

Honestly, this review is painful for me to keep talking about, so let me end it by saying this: if you haven't watched New Moon, what I described basically happens in the movie: almost nothing happens, except where Bella and Alice race to Italy to stop Edward from trying to expose himself, thus provoking the Volturi from killing him on the spot. It's basically an installment where Bella acts like a crazy person who does extremely implausible, selfish and idiotic things just so her vampire boyfriend and his clan can notice her and return to her, instead of moving with her life like Edward pleaded with her to do in the first place! The acting is more wooden than a rain forest and when good actor appear in nothing more than cameo roles (Michael Sheen as Aro, leader of the Volturi and Dakota Fanning as Jane, the sadistic mind reader who gets a kick out of torturing her victims), they are given little to do and they aren't given the time to make any sort of an impact. The script tries to echo the Bard's tale of Star-Crossed Lovers, but there are no modern-day Montagues or Capulets, no Tybalt or Mercutio in the bunch. There are clumsy references to the play, but there's no sense of impending doom or tragedy on the horizon for these two lovebirds, there's not even a red-blooded spark between Pattinson's Edward or Stewart's Bella to be found, or even any real chemistry between her and Lautner's Jacob for Pete's sake! This is little more than a shallow, pretentious and over-the-top soap opera that somehow found it's way from the TV screen to the big screen.

Unfortunately, this is only Part II of the five installment's Summit made. Eclipse comes tomorrow, and then the two-part finale: Part I of Breaking Dawn on Tuesday, and Part II on Wednesday.

Zero stars out of ****