FILM REVIEW: The Twilight Saga '“ New Moon

Poor old Bella has somehow got to choose to between them '“ a choice all the more complicated by the fact that sparkly-cheeks pretty soon disappears.

Soon, there's only the rippling-muscled dunce in the frame. But then slowly it emerges that he too has got a secret.

After falling in love with a vampire, is Bella about to fall in love with a werewolf?

Young love

Whether you care or not will depend entirely on whether you are a 13-year-old female with a weakness for all-American beefcakes with dodgy monster baggage.

If you're not, then at two hours plus, this film will have all the appeal of an extended wait at a bus stop.

For its target audience, it doubtless mixes wise cracks, hormones, young love and a few thrills to perfection.

If you're not who it's aimed at, then tie a bunch of garlic round your neck, arm yourself with a silver bullet and avoid it like the plague.

More for fans

Even if you approach it with an open mind, the trouble is that it's a film which relies far too much on you having seen the first in the series for it to make any sense whatsoever.

The groupies and the aficionados will lap it up; the rest of us will be left nonplussed and bored by this hotpotch of corn and cheap tricks.

Not even the werewolves spring to life with great conviction; and where there ought to be a lingering malevolence underpinning it all, there's a simply a daftness which repeatedly tumbles into the risible.

It doesn't help that the supposedly irresistible Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) is so overwhelmingly resistible.

Ridiculous

He's ridiculous with his long locks and no less so when he shaves them off and starts strutting round bare-chested.

Mr Gorgeous Vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) fares slightly better by being mostly absent; only Kristen Stewart as poor old Bella Swan, torn between two terrors, remotely suggests she can act.

True, it all starts to hot up reasonably nicely after an hour and a half or so, but it's too little too late '“ unless, of course, you're a shrieking teenager, in which case you will have long since swooned into your popcorn.

Bla Lugosi

This is a film to make the rest of us feel old.

You'll soon start hankering after Bla Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jnr.

At least they had class.

Now, there's a pair who really did know how to send shivers down your spine.

What did you think of the film?

Do you agree with this review?

Share your views by commenting below.

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