New Moon was soooo much better than Twilight.

And Jacob? Oh my. I might switch from Team Edward to Team Jacob.

Okay, not really. First, I’m not on any sort of team. And second, if you’ve read all four books then you you know that isn’t really an issue. Still, Jacob is… oh MY.

But to review the movie (with spoilers, since this is a review to help parents figure out if it’s okay for their kids), first let me say that one of my biggest concerns with teens reading this series is that they’ll want to emulate Bella’s obsession with Edward. Her self worth, her identity, everything she is… she’s so tied up in Edward that when he leaves she can’t do more than just exist. And barely that. I think if you have kids reading the books then you have to talk about how that makes for a good story, but would be a terrible way to live your life.

Which brings me to how the movie portrays this: I think that the movie actually showed a bit that it was silly for Bella to act the way she did. In the book you get so much of how Bella feels that I’m not sure teens will see how she’s acting… they’ll just “get” how she feels and think it’s natural to act that way if that is how you feel. In the movie we can see her sitting at a table by herself acting all droopy, and it comes off as a bit ridiculous to act that way. I wondered how they were going to show the “blank page” thing from the books. In the books, the passage of time for a severely depressed teen is shown by blank pages, with just the month on the page. They did a pretty good job of showing that in the movie, by circling around Bella sitting all “spaced out” in a chair and letting us see the change in seasons out the window as they circled around. Though, it made me a bit dizzy and I had to close my eyes a few times.

New Moon stayed much closer to the book than Twilight did, with only a few slight alterations, nothing major. The makeup was better (still not great, but better – and I guess they couldn’t depart from the first movie’s makeup all that much so they are kind of stuck with that look), and the special effects were much better done. I loved the wolves.

The good parts of the books and movie as far as parents go are: no premarital sex, no drugs, no drinking, no rough language. The books show the kids paying attention to school and doing homework, the movies don’t show such a positive picture of school but I guess there isn’t that much time.

The biggest issue in New Moon that I think parents should be aware of are some intense actions scenes that sensitive kids are going to have a problem with. What age is New Moon going to be okay for? Common Sense Media has the parents rating it as “iffy” for 13 and up, and the kids rating it as “on” for 11 and up. I think there are some 11 year olds who would be okay watching it, and I think there are probably some 13 year olds that it might be a bit much for. Which means, as always, you know your child best and know what they can and can’t deal with.

The most intense scenes I’m remembering at the moment are: the wolves chasing down and killing a rogue vampire (though we don’t see the actual death, we see the chase and we see three wolves jumping him and just about to bite into him when it cuts away), and we see two wolves fighting each other in a very violent and destructive (for the environment) way. There is also a fight between vampires that gets pretty violent (a vampire is slammed into marble stairs and it breaks the stairs up). That’s not all there is, but those three scenes were pretty intense.

When it comes out on DVD I will probably let GG watch parts of it. I did that with Twilight, she’s seen enough to say she’s seen the movie, but she did so without watching any of the violence. That will be a bit harder to do with New Moon, but since so many of her friends will get to see it, I think that works for us. I don’t think this movie deserves to get a “forbidden fruit” label, but there are some concerns. The storyline isn’t the problem with GG, but she’s very sensitive to violence.

I can’t wait for Eclipse to come out now – and we only have to wait seven months this time. Which means we should start seeing some trailers before too much longer. I’ve seen one teaser poster already, but I’m betting we won’t see trailers until after Christmas.

UPDATE: GG is home now and we’ve been talking about the movie, and that showed me there is another very important point parents need to be aware of. Edward goes to the Volturi (Italian Vampire Counsel) because he wants to die. Vampires are practically indestructible and can’t really commit suicide, so the best he can come up with is to go to the Volturi and break the rules enough that they kill him for it. So, you need to be prepared to talk about the concept of suicide with your kids, too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 10:09 am and is filed under Book, CD, & DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.