Twilight – New Moon

I admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I was dragged along by my daughter to see the first Moonlight film. And having seen them filming the sequel in Italy earlier on this year I was looking forward to seeing New Moon so it seemed a good choice for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

I should have been prepared for the film with all the teenage girls chatting nervously and happily in the cinema foyer. I was the oldest person by around four decades barring the other Mum or two. There were constant shrieks of recognition amongst the crowd – clearly, if you are a teenage girl then this is the film to see.

There were lots of adverts and trailers – some distinctly inappropriate for such a young and impressionable audience (e.g. Kate Moss playing suggestively with a rose for an YSL fragrance and equally provocative scenes for a Jean Paul Gaultier perfume) and numerous car adverts. At least there were also adverts for the Orange RockCorps (getting young people to volunteer) and the Maths and Science web sites. Mind you, the trailers for the imminent films of Avatar, Law Abiding Citizen and Sherlock Holmes (especially Jude Law) looked encouraging – they are on my list for when they come out (however, the new Sarah Jessica-Parker and Hugh Grant film “Heard about the Morgans?” looked like one to avoid).

So, the main feature starts with our heroine happily dating Edward the vampire – obviously the object of affection for the majority of the audience too. But then Edward takes flight leaving us to spend a considerable time watching Bella – who never smiles anyway – mooning around in her room in one of those dramatic, end of the world sulks that only teenagers can do really well.

Anyway, she does some reckless stuff and develops a passion for motorcycles (don’t we all?) and relies on Jacob – suitably geeky with his long black Red Indian hair – to help her rebuild a couple of old bikes. My 18 year old son had warned me that Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob, underwent an awesome body building programme to shape up for his role but the young audience went into raptures when he whipped off his tee shirt to reveal his new physique. With an 18 year old son it really isn’t appropriate for me to admire gratuitous shots of young men’s naked torsos but I can imagine that it would appeal to some. And there are plenty of such shots. And the delight of the female audience increased when Jacob added an on-trend short haircut to rid himself of those girly, geeky long tresses.

I had to chuckle – Having demonstrated exceedingly poor taste in selecting a vampire for her first love, Bella shows incredible bad judgement in men by choosing a werewolf as her transition guy. A bit of a warning to all us ladies perhaps – the most interesting men are not always what they seem.

The film was sloooow. Even my daughter – an ardent fan – agreed with me. We could have cut out an hour and still covered the story. I nearly dozed off a couple of times. But was alert enough to pick up on some annoying inconsistencies (e.g. if they have to go to Italy to die, how come the werewolves managed to dispatch the dread locked one so easily?).

Anyway, it got more interesting when the rest of Edward’s family came back into the plot and those scenes of Italy (Assisi mountain top village and the inside of the famous war memorial) were tantalisingly too short. And whilst I enjoyed the senior vampire court room scenes I couldn’t help applauding the casting director ensuring the head vampire was played by the same actor as the one who previously played Tony Blair. Guess that just about sums it up for British politics.

And when we got to the end…even the young, admiring audience groaned with the corniness of the final scene. Who said romance was dead? It certainly isn’t immortal.

Maybe I have grown too fond of the rather more racy, exciting plot lines and seriously bad characters in True Blood but I think that Twilight sequels will remain strictly for the youngsters and the Edward and Jacob fans. And as someone who has Native American ancestors, I have a bit of a problem with being only associated with reservations, dream catchers and werewolves but that’s stereotypes for you.