The Twilight Saga: New Moon Reviews
Top Critic
So long as there are people, there will be love stories -- I hope they all feel as lush and lively as this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
I am not ashamed to admit that I will be the first in line for Twilight part three.
If only director Chris Weitz had managed to tease out the real drama -- Bella's fear of aging -- instead of a tired one.
A landmark cinematic event in 280 words, or one for every $500,000 of weekend box office.
It has an amazing kind of emotional integrity and intensity.
Weitz's pacing is so limp you're going to need the electricity generated by a live audience to keep from yelling, "Hurry it up!"
A big bowl of adolescent romantic mush garnished with horror-lite action scenes and a rushed road trip, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is a mess.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Memo to director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg: Just because you make a movie about vampires doesn't mean you suck the life out of your story.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
The movie's script and production values represent a big step up from the nearly unwatchable predecessor and make it suitable viewing even for people who aren't Twilight nerds.
'New Moon' is little more than a skilful soap opera, but it's still enjoyable escapism - even if you're old and wise enough to see through it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The boys preen while the girl sulks. And pouts. And sulks. And pouts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
'New Moon' is also a less pretentious movie than its predecessor. Writer Melissa Rosenberg, who wrote the screenplay for 'Twilight' as well, has loosened up a bit...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
New Moon offers few of the juicy, go-for-broke romantic pleasures of its predecessor, and the movie is so badly shaped that it's hard not to blame Weitz as a director.
Alone of all the earnest players in this turgidly euphemistic melodrama, Sheen seems to grasp that the only way you can keep a straight face through this choked-up virginity is to carry it way into camp.
The big tease turns into the long goodbye in The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Twihards will appreciate director Chris Weitz's faithfulness to the source text, even as he improves on it.
What a bloated, self-important, crashing bore!
Mopey, draggy, and absurdly self-important, the movie nonetheless twangs at some resonant affective chord.
I can't comment on the acting because I didn't catch Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner doing any. They basically primp and pose through the same humdrum motions they did before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
New Moon comes dangerously close to self-parody on more than one occasion, but it seems blissfully unaware of this and soldiers on with a seriousness that's unintentionally funny.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Inept cinematography? Oh, yes. Dark and moody is one thing, but this is so murky you have to squint to figure out what's going on.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Weitz goes for an appealing, slightly old-fashioned look, one in which the near- constant rain nicely mirrors Bella's internal weather conditions.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
The movie gives the 'Twilight' fans exactly what they want but doesn't offer too much for the rest of us.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It's too long, it's poorly acted, the story's clunky and the dialogue is laughable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Weitz is more awkward than Hardwicke with the casual teenaged interactions. Melissa Rosenberg's dialogue hasn't improved, though she gets a boost by using quotes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
This swoony adaptation of the second installment in Stephenie Meyer's young-adult series is a potent stew of fairy tale and romance-novel fantasy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Even the appearance of Dakota Fanning as a red-eyed bloodsucker capable of inflicting intolerable pain on others falls flat: When one of the presiding vampires mutters "Let's be done with this," you can't help but agree.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Despite melodrama that, at times, is enough to induce diabetes, there's enough wolf whistle in this sexy, scary romp to please anyone.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Kristen Stewart brings such raw vulnerability to the screen that she makes moping attractive.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
All three lovers are so joyless, it's hard to imagine why any of them would want to spend eternity together.
Alexandre Desplat's overwrought musical score will appeal to viewers who already agree that Bella and Edward's love is glorious. Others won't be persuaded, no matter how much he insists.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Where the first film's director, Catherine Hardwicke, plugged into Meyer's vision of supernatural teenage lust with abandon, Chris Weitz is stuck with a sequel that's a morning-after mope-fest.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The pop culture phenomenon that resembles Star Wars much as the Prime Minister of Belgium resembles the President of the United States (respective box office ranks of these two films in their respective decades: 71, 1).
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Wisely New Moon brings back screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who continues to prove she has a much better way with English than the author of the books, Stephenie Meyer.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Director Chris Weitz proves that The Golden Compass was no fluke: He really is a non-master of action.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Sexier, darker and funnier, New Moon rises well above the anemic 2008 film version of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The stakes are higher and the intensity deeper this time, despite a plot that approaches the ripest of melodrama - and which occasionally provokes unintended laughter, as does the terribly twee soundtrack.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Weitz takes a looser approach than the series' last director, Catherine Hardwicke, did. He has a better sense of humor, too.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Though an improvement over the first Twilight film, this sequel (both based on Stephenie Meyer's best-selling books) drags and sputters, even in scenes meant to be infused with passion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's slow and not particularly fulfilling -- a half-an-hour or so of drama stretched out for about two.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Twilight Saga: New Moon takes the tepid achievement of Twilight, guts it, and leaves it for undead.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Incoming director Weitz is a smart choice for the material.
That flip tone -- the gags and one-liners -- get us past the longing, the depression, the sulking, the almost comically swooning moments.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
This episode is as repetitive as the first, with endless scenes of kissus interruptus punctuated by moody indie-rock songs.
Constrained by the plot of the novel, the film keeps the two lovers apart for quite a spell, robbing the project of the crazy-in-love energy that made Twilight, the first entry in the series, such a guilty pleasure.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
This second screen installment of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling series focuses, somewhat convincingly, on the emotions of an 18-year-old coping with her undying love of the undead.
