The Twilight Saga: New Moon | D

Reaching the status of cultural zeitgeist has not helped to legitimize the Twilight franchise. But a series that can open with a $140 million weekend doesn't exactly need legitimacy. In my experience, popularity isn't grounds for assuming that anything will be a satisfying or even interesting experience. New Moon's disregard for basic storytelling mechanics confirms this theory.

The facts: The Twilight Saga: New Moon is directed by Chris Weitz, who previously helmed Down to Earth, About a Boy and The Golden Compass. Kristen Stewart stars again as Bella, a hapless, impotent heroine, while Robert "just try to make me wash my hair" Pattinson returns as Edward Cullen, the brooding vampire lover that Bella picked up in biology class. Edward's doubts over his self-control get the best of him, so he skips town and abandons the needy Bella for good. After she emerges from her catatonically depressed state of uselessness, she reconnects with childhood friend and possible lycanthrope Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Regardless of how many abdominal muscles the "man" has (he's 17, perverts), Lautner still sounds like a prepubescent Midwesterner reading his lines off of cue cards. For that matter, chronic mumbler Stewart isn't much better, but Pattinson is by far the worst, going for stoic and arriving at vaguely constipated. Then again, all three are portraying terribly written characters.

So it's all angst-ridden staring contests, stilted dialogue and farcical CGI theatrics until Edward's clairvoyant sister Alice shows up needing Bella's help. Edward is in danger with Italy-based keepers of vamp law, the Volturi, which includes Dakota Fanning and Frost/Nixon's Michael Sheen. Only Bella, of course, can save him. At this point the movie actually becomes interesting for about 15 minutes, during which Bella must choose between her two emotionally underdeveloped suitors. She travels to Italy to save the life of the one who canned her (at the expense of the one who stuck around giving her puppy dog eyes for 45 minutes).

The thing is, vampires are kind of my wheelhouse. Buffy is a personal hero, and for five years I was devoted to its spinoff Angel. Despite the campiness, I managed to enjoy both print and cinematic incarnations of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire; the Anita Blake series fascinates as an alternate "slayer" mythology; I used to delight in my beloved supernatural soap Dark Shadows; I adore The Lost Boys; and to me Blade is just unremittingly awesome. This is not to mention F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), which still offers a tense and horrific viewing experience, as does Werner Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre (a remake of sorts), and E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized account of the making of Nosferatu. Similarly, Bram Stoker, Tod Browning, and Francis Ford Coppola's takes on Dracula are all dynamic for their varied interpretations of what it means to be eternally parasitic and condemned to Hell, blood and the night.

I'd like for Twilight to be as good as any of these. It is not. Is Bella and Edward's self-absorbed codependence what audiences see as desirable? Maybe the problem is that Edward's power and Bella's passivity, the fundamental dynamic of the series, reads so trite as to be offensive. How can anyone root for a heroine so unaware she's involved with a sanctimonious prick?

Readers expect epic, unquestioning love and would be disappointed in anything that doesn't prescribe to the book's melodrama. This review is not for them. Non-Twihards, however, may find the whole affair laughably vacuous. So see New Moon for its inescapable presence, if that's your thing. See it for the simpering romance. But don't see it seeking much, or risk feeling bitten.