REVIEW: NEW MOON
3 out of 5 stars

You would have thought the president was at Cinerama with all the security in place. No cell phones on the premises. Metal detectors at the stairs. “Guards with night-vision goggles who would remove anyone filming the movie.”

Though anyone with a pulse has a basic grasp of the Twilight series by now, here’s what you need to know for sequel New Moon: Star-crossed lovers Bella (Kristen Stewart) and kindly vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) are madly in love and show it with lots of furtive hand-holding and kissing.

Then Edward leaves Bella, sending her into a high school-heartbreak tailspin that in the book goes on for hundreds of whiny pages, but is made quick work of in the film. Three camera rotations around a depressed Bella seated by the window, where she watches for any sign of Edward’s return, and three months have passed. Done. Nice. Any "woe-is-me" comes sparingly, usually as a brief, narrated email from Bella to Edward’s sister Alice (charming Ashley Greene). Our heroine ultimately finds solace in friend Jacob (a chiseled Taylor Lautner who makes the men in 300 look pudgy), and then finds out he and his buddies are werewolves. Werewolves and vampires are mortal enemies. Crisis ensues.

While Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, pulsated with frenetic teen-vampire lust, New Moon is more polished, more professional, more enjoyable: like going from an indie music video to a studio production. In the hands of director Chris Weitz, New Moon has fewer hokey lines and unintentionally funny scenes. The killer soundtrack includes tracks by Thom Yorke, Bon Iver, and Death Cab for Cutie. Solid special effects allow a shirtless man-child to “phase” into a werewolf on the run. And the much-improved script allows actors like Stewart and Billy Burke (playing Bella’s father and Forks Police Chief Charlie Swan) to flourish.

Pattinson is absent throughout most of the movie, and to be honest, I didn’t miss him. When he returned, the cool, nonchalant emo persona he concocted for the first film simply came off flat, especially when he shared the screen with Dakota Fanning. She shows more talent in one death-stare as evil Volturi vampire Jane than Pattinson does in a dozen seductive glances.

New Moon opens on Friday, November 20. Read our interview with two of the film’s vampires here.