How to Take off Your Shirt 101
By Lexi Cotcamp and Stephanie Cheng
“Twilight”? “New
Moon”? Why would that be the
title of the film?
To better tie into the
plot, this movie obviously
should have been called “Jacob
Black (Taylor Lautner) Learns
How to Take His Shirt Off.”
The Twilight Saga has
become a screaming preteengirl
phenomenon, rendering
young females worldwide incoherent
in the presence of supernatural,
normal-body-temperature-
defying men.
This time, the movie’s
heroine, Bella Swan (Kristen
Stewart), is yet again plunged
into danger, romance, and of
course, the most horrific of horrors,
teen angst.
In facing these problems,
Bella maintains the same facial
expression throughout the entire
film and seemingly delights
in doing two things: biting her
lip constantly and screaming
while writhing in bed (apparently,
deciding which infatuated
lover to choose is excruciating).
Now, she must endure
the most terrifying ordeal of
all: her birthday.
For those who have not
yet been sucked into this vortex
of insipid romance, Bella,
the epitome of a damsel-in-distress,
is mainly concerned with
remaining desirable to her undead
boyfriend, Edward Cullen
(Robert Pattinson), who is essentially
a 107 year old trapped in a 17 year old’s body.
When her beloved Edward
leaves her and disappears,
she is devastated and reduced
to a virtual zombie.
But worry not, squealing
tween viewers! The disappearance
of one romantic hero obviously
makes room for a new
one.
Pale-boy Edward is soon
replaced by Jacob Black, Bella’s
old childhood friend and
new boy-toy. While the storyline
continues to focus on Cullen,
Jacob Black plays a much
more prominent role than he
did in the original Twilight.
Amazingly, over a period
of only a few months,
Jacob has grown—a lot. What
we really mean: Jacob Black
exists in this film as a soupedup
man-child on more steroids
than Barry Bonds himself, and he really wants to show it.
Black seems to have
softball-sized tumors growing
out of his neck and back, which
frequently causes periods of canine-
like behavior.
Oh, did we mention he
is, unabashedly, a werewolf as
well? Rumor has it that werewolf
rabies is the new swine
flu. Somebody—please get that
boy a doctor.
In accordance with her
fetish for immortal creatures
with extreme body temperatures,
Bella is fascinated and
tells Jacob that he’s “sort of
beautiful.” She’s also fabulously
eloquent.
Cheesy, romantic lines
were cute the first few times,
but the inordinate amount of
mushy, emotional dialogue
more often resulted in fits of
uncontrollable laughter in the
audience than in sympathy for
the relatively soulless characters.
Jacob, the supposed
‘main attraction’ of the film,
delivered no shortage of cliché
sweet nothings including, “I
know what he did to you Bella;
I want you to know I will never
hurt you.”
Luckily, Jacob’s sugarcoated
lines were somewhat
overshadowed by the manwolf‘
s clothing— or lack thereof.
Jacob’s transformation
begins with cutting his long
mane à la Fabio, but the real
change comes with the seemingly
permanent removal of his
shirt. The poor, tattered piece of
cloth is removed so many times
that the theme song of this
movie really should be Britney’s
“Oops, I Did it Again!”
This, of course, is of no
objection to the shrieking viewers
and Bella.
In all fairness, “New
Moon” was substantially better
than “Twilight” in terms of production,
with the exception of
Edward’s infamous sparkling;
however, the sequel was, much
to the dismay of some viewers,
intentionally funnier than its
predecessor.
Though the main characters
remain the same in both
installments, the “New Moon”
cast is sprinkled with a handful
of fairly well-known actors
including Dakota Fanning and
Michael Sheen.
Clearly, “New Moon” is
no Academy Award winner, but
if you want to see the ill effects
of steroids, or you need some
pointless entertainment in your life, go for it.
