Reviewed by

Les Scott

The screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg leaves much to be desired as she chopped and hacked her way thru the jungle of words, feelings and emotions Stephanie Meyer penned originally.

The writer and director had good material to work with. Stephanie Meyer in my opinion (which is correct by the way) is not a great writer, but her story is good. However, as usual, the writer and director started cutting content and not insignificant content at that. Some key info was left out of the flick that really was important to the telling of the story. You see in my belief system a story is experienced, not just read or watched; you live it, you’re in it, but that was not possible with this film as it left out some of the crucial parts that led you to become "one with", and part of the story, to see and to feel what the characters are seeing and feeling.

Bella Swan (Christen Stewart) is devastated because she keeps getting older as the love of her life, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) remains 17 years old for all of eternity… He’s a vampire of course. Now I know you’re all wondering what is wrong with this chick! A VAMPIRE, hello! But whaddaya expect? She’s a stubborn teen with a dad (Billy Burke) who’s the town sheriff; that would be Chief Swan to you and me.

Anyway, Bella gets even more depressed, devastatingly depressed I’d say, because the Cullens leave town at Edwards’s insistence to let Bella have a safe normal life. The problem is that the chick goes mental and discovers the more reckless she becomes the more she hears Edwards’s voice and see’s his image. Reckless being riding off on a motorcycle with a stranger, learning to ride or rather crash a motor cycle herself and the piece de resistance- "Cliff Diving", which ends up almost killing her and would have if her new best friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) who’s impressive body (NO I AM NOT MAN CRUSHING Christopher!) does not fit his teenage voice (sorry but it’s true), didn’t pull her out. It is young Jake to whom Bella has turned to fill the void left by Edward. As she spends more time with Jake however, she finds out there is a lot more in her small town of Forks than just vampires (oh I forgot to tell you). Jakes a mythical creature himself, can you say werewolf? (There. What? There, wolf. There, castle.)

The disgust with the CGI revolves around the wolves. From a distance the stuff looks ok but the up close shots sucked! Anyway, as all this takes place, a very deranged, very hot vampire, Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre) is trying to get close enough to Bella to torture and kill her. This is about the only thing that ties this second movie to the first, so if you didn’t see Twilight you’ll probably wonder WTF is going on.

Anyway, a mistake leads Edward to believe Bella has committed suicide by jumping off said cliff. Now grief stricken, Edward is off to Italy to get the ruling vampires (The Volturi) to kill him. So Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene- who does do a good job of acting) and Bella are off to save him. Here, the writer and director took some serious license; to the stories detriment I might add.

They did get Dakota Fanning to play (Jane) a small sadistic vampire to which some added license would have been much welcomed, because her character doesn’t really get to say much even in the book but they could have had some fun there but unfortunately chose to go in another direction. Too bad, as the young but very talented and gifted actor could have added a lot to the scenes, but it seems as though Mr. Weitz truly didn’t know what he had to work with in the way of talent.

In a parting shot I have to say that all the scenes where Robert Pattinson is trying to show his acting skills of feelings , earnestness, guilt etc. he looks like he’s been eating nothing but cheese for a week and is trying to pinch off a monster.**** Can I say that in print and not get sued?