Released November 20, 2009
The New Moon has risen. It has risen indeed. After weaving through hoards of tweens racing back and forth from their seats to popcorn and almost ditching out on the whole idea after seeing over 50 people waiting in line for the 10:30 showing - I hit up the 10:00 Arlington, VA showing of New Moon with my lady. The experience as a whole gave me an incredible range of emotions. However, the movie itself was unable to fulfill my emotional expectations for what I personally consider a great film.
I would never even dare to try and really critique this movie because with anything that is ALREADY a cult classic before it even hits the big screen - being a conventional good movie is almost pointless. All director Chris Weitz needs to do is make sure the film matches the best-selling Stephanie Meyer novels, has the hottest teen or teen-looking actors, and utilizes puffy lips and longing gazes and the movie will be an absolute success. For Weitz, making this movie must honestly have been somewhat of a mix - on one hand, people's love of the book must constrict his creative touch as he tries not to change the story - and on the other hand, there must be a great sense of freedom to know that theaters are GOING TO BE packed for your film no matter what. An interesting rock and hard place (with a fat ass check ready at the end of the day).
The film was definitely well made. Shots were beautiful. Graphics were acceptable. Production value was a 10 out of 10. But this was most certainly a film not made for me and I totally think everyone involved in the film could care less how interested a 24 year old male was in the film. What I have to do when I see something like this - similar to my feelings like when I first saw High School Musical - where it is impossible for me to hide my feelings of "Good god that movie was awful!"- is to just say - SOMEONE GETS IT. Someone, most likely author Stephanie Meyer, has an unbelievable sense of pop culture and created something - a film about freaking VAMPIRES - that American Tweens are blown away by. And when you have something like that, to not respect it is to just be a grade-A hater.
The film for me lacked a significant plot to really hold me into it and I was genuinely blown away by how cheesy many moments were (so was the audience, who burst into laughter at almost all of the most serious parts). It did do a great job of creating the good-bad guy and in fact this film had two good-bad guys vying for the love of one helpless "diva" (Kristen Stewart). It seems, for at least the time being, there is no better bad ass good guy than someone without a soul who just might drink your blood. The vampire is the perfect character for the classic American story. In the early 2000's, the biggest example of this kind of story was the ex-con good guy (think The Rock or anything starring Vin Diesel) - a guy who society would normally throw into jail but in the movies uses his bad ways to do good. In this case, you got a bad ass Werewolf and a bad ass Vampire both doing "right" while also having the potential to be violent tyrants. It is a very interesting phenomenon some would say started with America being born in a violent revolution and persists today with pop-cultures obsession with gangster rap and in this case, the Vamps and Wolves.
In the end, even with people laughing at the serious points of the movie and the theater being an Arctic Tundra, most of the tweens in the audience could barely breathe when the movie ended they were so captivated and involved. THAT is impressive. If you want to be 2009 - don't let the New Moon pass you by.
2.5 out of 4
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