November 24th, 2009 2:22 am

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

It is hard to fathom the mass rabid hysteria that the Twilight franchise incites in its fans. So for those who have yet to be blinded by the dreamy awesomness of these films, here comes your less fanatical-more grounded eye on what’s going on here.

It is still hard to fathom the mass rabid hysteria that the Twilight franchise incites in its fans. The problem isn’t so much that people enjoy the films, as there are people who enjoy stuff that’s much worse than this, but more that its hard to gain a grounded, well balanced perspective to the franchise – its basically a matter of picking your side and swooning as such.

So for those who have yet to be blinded by the dreamy awesomeness of these films, here comes your less fanatical-more grounded eye on what’s going on here.

As if anyone was doubting the possibility, New Moon offers very little difference to what its predecessor essentially set up. Its just the next instalment of the hyper-romanticised, exaggerated vampire love story for young girls. No more and no less. For the cynics out there, it’s difficult to say its harmless puff-cinema as its suggestive nature sways more to the obsessive side of romance. The literary-light musings of its characters through deep, longing, dramatic verses and gazes are just as expertly crafted here as they were in Twilight to maximise the effectiveness of said romantic appeal. To say that its not designed as such is the extent to which the obsession of these movies extends.

Okay, so this kind of narrative style isn’t to everyone’s appeal. The films aren’t meant for that kind of wide reaching demographic; let the girls have their dreamy undead and wolf-like male protagonists. For all the exploitative female characters in cinema that men get, a couple of guys taking their shirts off for the ladies really isn’t going to balance the scales anyway. Basically, this kind of thing either appeals to you, or it doesn’t.

For most everyone else though, that aren’t caught under the spell of this, it may well be a chore to sit through. The dialogue mostly borders on ridiculous, in particular much of the tripe that heartthrob Robert Pattinson has to spout in the effort of getting the young hearts racing. Wolf-boy Taylor Lautner fares better when paired with Kristen Stewart who has to carry much of the film’s weight on her shoulders; she too struggles under material that is well beneath her acting abilities.

Visually, the movie looks as you’d expect, Chris Weitz’s camera focusing completely on what helps sell the appeal of the movies. Compared to Catherine Hardwick’s direction in Twilight, Chris doesn’t deliver anything all that groundbreaking. If he should be praised for anything, it’s the lack of high wire forest vampire running that cheapened the first movie. There are also a few key scenes here that are actually rather good to watch, all of which work mostly because of the best element of the movie altogether; the soundtrack. Again, still probably not worth paying to see at the cinemas unless you are a fan of this franchise already, but certainly a good example of the bar being raised somewhat after the first film. Overall the film is more than adequate in the technical stakes, but certainly not worth the the price of admission just to admire it.

In the end though, films like this are essentially review proof. That is, weather its panned or celebrated by critics (or anyone for that matter), the film is designed to be the massive pop-cultural phenomenon that it was always going to be no matter what anyone says. This is pure popcorn cinema for girls, and with an already well-established blood-thirsty fan base of them ready to see this in droves, the ramblings of cinematic cynics and their mostly meaningless point of view will never be a match for that.

You know weather these movies are for you by the very fact that you have any idea of what its all about. New Moon follows on from Twilight closely enough to keep fans satisfied which is all that matters. If you aren’t one already, you wont be one after this, and you won’t be missing out on anything that will change your life either.