And This is My Review

The first thing I feel I need to say is that Chris Weitz is a genius. Seriously, I feel like tracking him down and embracing him like a long lost loved one. I feel that strongly about him. When I heard that he was going to be directing New Moon I had high hopes because of his film adaptation of this book to this movie which I felt was nothing short of brilliant. (I chose to ignore some of the lower points in his career.) He not only lived up to my hopes but surpassed them infinitely.

It had everything that was lacking in the first installment. It stayed true to the book, rather than feeling like someone picked what they deemed were the best and most interesting parts of the story. It contained mostly dialogue directly from the book but also interspersed new dialogue that was current and sometimes comical.

The attention to detail was impressive except for the odd decision to have Edward driving a black Volvo something or other (looked more like an SUV than a car to me) instead of silver. Peter and I had a lovely moment during the scene when Bella goes to Emily and Sam's place and Emily puts the platter of HUGE muffins on the table. We looked at each other and said "Muffins!", thrilled to see something we'd imagined from the page translate so perfectly to the film.

The special effects were so close to perfect that it's almost not worth mentioning it's tiny short comings. The wolves, all things considered, were pretty awesome. Sam-Wolf in particular looked odd to me at times, I'm not exactly sure why, but the phasing and movement in general was spectacular.

Despite the (expected) lack of Edward in this movie it contained an eternity's worth of beautiful moments between he and Bella which didn't feel rushed at all. This was a huge source of comfort to me as I was nearly devastated by the fact that during Twilight every time it even came close to touching the intensity and passion of their relationship BAM! new scene, moving on to more important things. Um, excuse me, there is no more important thing than that. It's kind of the entire point dudes.

As Bon mentioned in her comment on my previous post, watching it on opening night in a packed theater full of crazed fans is an experience in itself. I refused to be annoyed by any of them, knowing that I'll be seeing it numerous times I couldn't possibly be concerned about missing anything. Peter and I both found it incredibly amusing to hear the whoops and hollers during various parts most of which included any male without their shirt on. (which incidentally is A LOT!) It was a total blast to be in a theater buzzing with so much excitement and energy.

In the risk of building it up too much I venture to say it is about a billion times better than the first and I do believe it is going to break even more records in the money making department. And where Twilight made it's money from the sheer joy fans had seeing their beloved book come to the screen rather than the fact that it deserved to do so well, this movie will deserve every single penny it makes due to its extreme excellence.