ManicDDaily

New Moon has now been seen and pondered.  This is easy to do as it really is pretty ponderous.  (Yes, Bella is depressed, nearly catatonic,  but do we have to be?)

The music is particularly unfortunate.

As are the costumes.  Whoever came up with Edward’s robe with the Voluturi, which looks, at times, as if he were a Las Vegas crooner in drag, must be the same person who came up with Carlyle’s weird pale sweater set with the ascot type muffler.  Oh, and also the knickery vest shirt and shepherdess dress outfit.  (Don’t want to spoil this one.) And  Edward in the blue silk pajama top.  Unfortunate.)

The actors do the best job they can (which is not bad.)  Their eyebrows and lips work very hard to convey depth beyond the sometimes goofy script.  The actual lines don’t help much;  these feel endless and redundant in the Jacob/Bella scenes; clipped and overly-compressed in those with Edward/Bella.  (You can see which team I’m on.)

Also, though the movie promised a lot of Robert Pattinson (in all the ghostly Edward images), there really is not enough.  What’s especially lacking is any exposition of why Bella is so crazy about Edward.  Pattinson’s looks and innate charisma go a long way, but, if you had not read the books and/or were not already fascinated by Edward, it would be hard to understand Bella’s ongoing loyalty.  Their relationship is simply not fleshed out—where are all the “sleepovers”?   While both Kristen Stewart and Pattinson are more openly emotional in this movie, the script keeps them in a narrow channel.   (Bella’s relationship with her father, played by the wonderful Billy Burke, has more nuance.)

Partly this is a problem of a sequel.  Several sequences seem like much ado about nothing, simply because the background story is not really introduced.  (The repeated screaming in the sleep, the skipping chase scene with Victoria.)

Perhaps that unfortunate sound track is supposed to set a greater emotional context, but it mainly conveys that someone in the sound crew loves soupy scales.  (It’s like elevator music that actually goes up and down.)

I felt sorry for Rachel LeFevre (Victoria), who was much more angular, red, and menacing in this film (and will be replaced for the next.)

The audience very much appreciated Jacob’s bulked-up shoulders; Pattinson’s every entrance was greeted with glee.  An amazing number of men were in the audience;  men towed along by girl friends.  These guys were generally very well-behaved, although in the movie’s moments of greatest longing, loss, and/or romantic reconciliation, distinct guffaws echoed through the aisles.

In short, a bit of a disappointment, and yet, well….I may just like it better second time through.