Baying at the moon, big time.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
"I love you. You're my only reason to stay alive." Edward Cullen
How many times can "I can't live without you" or its variant be said in a movie? Too many when it's New Moon, the new teen tease of the Twilight Saga. I get the idea that teens long for each other much more than adults do, making teens the horniest animals on the planet.
Wait. Wait. "Animals": That's the big motif because were-wolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) substitutes for vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), who is on vacation from Bella (Kristen Stewart). It's just another sexual frustration for her. This girl might stand a better chance in a nunnery.
The slow teen romance has some of the worst dialogue this year. Bella says, for instance, "The absence of him is everywhere I look. It is like a big hole has been punched through my chest." While she says this, she gives her endlessly distracted look, the one that says how difficult life is for a teen with two wild hunks pursuing her.
When the teens are not mooning in the second half, there is some satisfactory action as Jacob and his shirtless boys turn into very big wolves. In fact, so many shirtless boys and no scantily-clad girls leave me to suspect a homoerotic sub theme. Do girls really want to date gay men?
Would that there were a lusty gay leitmotif, for then it would have saved me from a film whose first half is so slow I began thinking about The Fourth Kind, the most boring film of the year so far.
Who would have thought vampires and were-wolves could be dull? When they're teens, that's when.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com