My wife and I finally caught New Moon on DVD. It sucks.

Look, I know Twilight was not a great film, but it had a few things going for it that made it basically enjoyable from start to finish. First, the film had a story set-up, with actual dialog and basic character development, which launched the plot and sustained it through implied structure. It also had narration, and although I generally abhor narration, this was fairly well written and was executed pretty well by Kristen Stewart. Second, there was an actual story based around human issues – she was a kid falling in love, the guy was weird and she was trying to figure out what his deal was, she had friends who were not sure about her boyfriend, she had a difficult relationship with her Dad but was getting to know him, she missed her Mom. This gave the story some basic human resonance. Third, the vampires were cool, and the climax where she’s being hunted was a good action sequence. It even had a hokey 80’s ending which wasn’t too bad.

New Moon has none of this. It’s a perfect example of a totally uninspired sequel on autopilot. There is NO set-up whatsoever – the story just starts up like a crap sit-calm. The narration is gone and there is barely any dialog. I like Kristen Stewart as much as the next person, but she does need lines to speak! (All her lines boil down to “bite me.”) Plus, she is starting to develop some tics, probably because she has nothing to do or say in these wretched roles. The father and her friends are all cardboard cutouts now, and her relationship with them is lifeless and boring. The mother is gone from the picture.

Robert Pattinson’s acting as Edward has gone from a bad Bentley Mitchum impersonation in Twilight, to a mumbling weirdo who looks like Michael Jackson and stares at the ground all the time. Really, I’m not sure what the appeal of this guy is in this role. That leaves Jacob. Something happened to the kid playing Jacob – he is now positively FRIGHTENING! There’s a joke in the film where Bella tells him “you know, anabolic steroids are really bad for you,” but the sad thing is the kid MUST be roiding, either that or all the hormones in our water supply are getting past the tipping point. In one year he put on 30 pounds of muscle and reduced his body fat percentage to less than 1%. His neck is so much thicker than his head the only possible explanation is that he is site-injecting. On top of all this, he is a terrible actor, he and Kristen Stewart have no chemistry, and their relationship is very poorly written. At times their scenes are downright painful, and it leaves you wishing that the mumbling weirdo in “whiteface” would come back.

Lastly, about New Moon’s finale: The Volturi are just lame looking. They aren’t scary, they aren’t formidable, they aren’t beautiful, they aren’t interesting. They could be from a Saturday Night Live skit. The whole thing with the vampires’ different powers was done in the least compelling way imaginable. In the end, you could care less about the Volturi, Edward and Bella, the freak Jacob, or any of them.

Plus, I should add that the music, which was bad enough in Twilight, is now considerably worse and more distracting (and louder,) and the CGI, which was passable in Twilight, is now really unimpressive and overly emphasizes badly done slow-mo. And the wolves look fake.

It just stinks!