You’re a teenage girl — and if you’re not, just pretend — and you’re offered a romantic choice between (a) a whiny, morose, pale scarecrow who sulks all day, or (b) a ripped stud who’s gregarious, witty, can fix anything and would do anything to protect you and make you happy. Which do you choose?
 

Twilight: New Moon: “ …and that’s how vampire babies are made.”

That’s the premise of New Moon, the next installment of The Twilight Saga. My inability to take the film seriously isn’t because it’s a fantasy about vampires and werewolves, but because I can’t comprehend how any girl could spend 130 minutes (which seems three times as long) making her decision. Moreover, what does a guy who’s 109 years old (wonder how long he’s been a high school senior) see in such a whiny, morose, pale scarecrow who sulks all day? Well, there’s your answer: Vampire boy and high school girl are exactly alike; they deserve each other. Maybe the bigger question is, what does werewolf boy see in this girl?

Edward Cullen (Roger Pattinson) is an aloof, vampiric stand-in for Mr. Darcy, and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is a lifeless narcissist. They’re dull and depressing and virtually every character in the film is more interesting. Worse, director Chris Weiss (The Golden Compass) has no interest, as Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke had, in so marvelously fleshing out the secondary characters, and that’s my biggest disappointment. The relationships between Bella’s high school friends and between her dad and werewolf Jacob Black’s dad aren’t there, and completely wasted are Michael Sheen as the king of the vampires, Dakota Fanning as Sheen’s henchwoman and Graham Greene as a tribal elder who knows more about the pack of Native American werewolves than he’s letting on.

However, I’ll applaud Taylor Lautner (as the passionate wolf-boy, Jacob) and Ashley Greene (as Edward Cullen’s undead sister, Alice), who are both vastly more charismatic and likable than Stewart and Pattinson.

I realize we’re talking vampires and werewolves for teenage girls, so I don’t expect a gorefest, and I know that vampires have been romantic anti-heroes ever since Dracula, but I didn’t think they could be any wimpier than Anne Rice’s brooding rock-star undead — I was obviously wrong. The Vampire Lestat would rip Edward Cullen to pieces in a split second. No matter how tragic a character a vampire or werewolf may be, both monsters are cursed to feed on human life for their unholy immortality, and ignoring that makes them everyday people with either a sun allergy or a really fast-growing five o’clock shadow.

And, I was kind of prepared for the werewolves to be overgrown puppy dogs, but I didn’t expect them to be quite so cartoony.

The other way to look at it is that it’s a necessary lull in the broader story arc, with Edward and Bella separated for most of the film, and that the next, already-shot episode, Eclipse (under 30 Days of Night director David Slade), will be more satisfying. It would almost have to be.

Twilight: New Moon ★★
PG-13 for some violence and action.