Marval Movie

Billy Burke is the best actor in the whole Twilight Saga. He tries to give the best performance he can with what material he's been given. I believe him as a real man within this situation and feel sorry for his character that has to deal with the monsters and the constant insane situations that are brought to him because of his daughter and her choice of male company.

Picking-up from the last, New Moon, Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are a couple again and are rather normal, but there is also the question from the last movie, will Bella marry Edward? However not all goes smoothly because the crazed vampire from the first move is out to kill Bella, to do this she is assembling an army of newly turned vampires to destroy her and the Cullen's. So for reinforcements she seeks-out the help of Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the werewolf from the last movie and with the help of his pack start a big battle, all on her account. But Bella (Ow woe is her!) is caught between the affections of two males. To-which she does share feeling for each of them in-return.

This then makes official what was being built to in the last movie, the Love Triangle. The most tired and shallow story setups that you can imagine. So overused, such a lazy technique to force drama and character interaction. And Bella's poor father is trying his best to do right by his daughter as well as perform his duties as sheriff, even though Bella has decided to keep him in the dark about all the vampire and werewolf stuff.

As much as this movie does fail in many points it still tries and improves on others. There are jokes directed at the series itself, take for example when Edward has to drop Belle off with Jacob, who is obviously shirtless, Edward makes the comment "Doesn't he own a shirt?" A question we have all asked ourselves. Also the vampires feats of superhuman abilities are portrayed with more gravity and convincing special effects (less like an old cartoon from the forties), no they are not particularly well executed here but being that our standards have been brought down so low an improvement is still an improvement.

The director of this movie is David Slade who's first movie was Hard Candy, a visually smart, well made twist on the torture porn genre. It was a promising start to a career, but this is not the movie I would assign a man of his talents and neither are they properly utilized. Not that any director can be blamed for that, these scenes seek to invoke eroticism in the most forced and poorly though-out way imaginable. It is almost as if the writer sat down and thought "How to I get to a point of intimacy and be as subtle as a tank on fire?"

No this movie is not very good but as seems the be the pattern with these movies they are memorably bad. This one is actually impressively bad in some parts and tries harder in others. And as always, Billy Burke does his best to keep his head above water in this sea of madness and first world problems.

Rating: 2 stars out of 4