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Nothing new about this "Moon"

I suspect I was the only one in the screening of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" (the second in the series) who hadn't seen "Twilight" or read a book in the series. Still, I had a pretty good idea of the arc of books one and two, and this entry seems to be the one to see: heartbreak, a love triangle, werewolves, and a trip to old-world vampire royalty. Not a bad time at the movies.

"New Moon" starts more like "Dawson's Creek" or "Smallville" than "X-Men 3". The early scenes suffer from particularly uninspired acting and dialogue. Like a WB teen-com, each turn of the plot comes with an intrusive pop soundtrack punctuating each of heroine Belle's mood swings. The camerawork is made for TV: grand Northwest forests with old red pickups stage left; pans and jump-cuts between heartthrobs in mid-shot and close-up.

The characters seem two-dimensional at best: Edward (Robert Pattinson) is the typical gloomy, silent vampire-type - protective, sensitive, and a bit too pastey for my tastes. Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is doofy with his long hair & big nose, but he grows increasingly more interesting as his canine genes bloom.

Once the film picks up (and it takes a while), it veers first into camp and humor, and then into escalating action. The real turning point follows the months of Belle and Jacob's intensifying relationship bonding over rebuilding motorcycles. With the bikes finally roadworthy, Belle takes her first run and ... crashes in 80 yards. Jacob's race to her side to tend to her split crown is deliciously ridiculous in a 14-year-old-girls-will-love-it kind of way. If my older sister had "Summer Lovin'", and my cousin had a bad boy making sure "no one puts baby in a corner", maybe Jacob's dexterity with his T-shirt will warm a young girl's heart and, some short months later, tickle her burgeoning irony without ever crystallizing into meanness.

"New Moon" takes no risks with ambiance, music, or direction, and it is light on folklore. The character development is better than expected for a blockbuster, though one has to pity a teen wolf: poor Jacob; of all the jilted, almost-kissed teens, no lips have ever gotten as close, as often, to their target as his. At least the werewolves are cool - yes, I admit I prefer their homoerotic, six-pack-abs to Twilight's glitter-vamp popular crowd. The CGI is pretty impressive, especially during the first big fight, which is wolf-on-wolf. Much better a "Twilight" werewolf than an "Underworld" Lycan. So, it's distinctly possible 14 year-old boys could also enjoy "New Moon" as much as their female counterparts.

As the film's plot moves to Italy, "New Moon" proves to be a decent vampire movie. Given how many bad vampire/werewolf stories are pumped out each year, this one ranks pretty well against its peers. Of course, it can't touch "American Werewolf in London", "Let the right one in", "Buffy", or that ilk. But it's just as likely that the intended audience has never heard of those. So they don't know what they're missing.