Over the (New) Moon

by Sariah S. Wilson

I can tell my grandkids that I was officially there.

Opening night to see "New Moon."

It gave a new definition to royal craziness.

I wanted to go opening weekend. I'm not exactly a Twihard, but I did really love the first two books (and enjoyed the first movie). So I wanted to see "New Moon," particularly before anyone could tell me anything about it. I didn't want to go in with any preconceived notions.

Turns out I wasn't the only one.

I had to arrange for a babysitter (which is one of my least favorite things about my family moving far away) and since there was a stake dance Saturday night, she agreed to come over on Friday. We also try to go out after our kids are in bed 1) because we want people to come back and babysit for us again and 2) we're never really sure how our oldest son will (or won't) behave.

Before we finalized our plans, I made sure to go out and buy my seats from movietickets.com, because it would have been no fun had we shown up to the theater only to find all of the shows sold out. This was also due to the fact that my husband had heard on the radio that "New Moon" had managed to break the pre-sales record of any other movie. Better safe than sorry.

Our movie theater is located in an area that has several restaurants, bookstores, and some other cutesy niche type stores. We came over the rise and saw that every single stall in every single establishment was taken. There were cars driving everywhere looking for spots, and no one leaving the movie theater. I've never seen anything like that before.

We managed to find a spot on a street behind the entertainment complex and ran over to the theater. People EVERYWHERE. Lines and lines and lines of people.

Now, I went opening weekend for the second set of Star Wars movies. And these were movies that people had grown up with - had watched and rewatched multiple times. I remember the frenzied anticipation and giddiness over "Phantom Menace." And even that, IMO, didn't compare to what I saw for "New Moon." People were lined up inside for shows that started anywhere from half an hour to two hours later. Hundreds and hundreds of people.

We got into our show, and while looking for seats, someone offered to scoot over so that we could sit together in a very good row.

Now, I would recommend that if you plan on going to see "New Moon" that you definitely go to a showing that has multiple teenage girls. They make the movie more fun and will give you infinitely more laughs than you'd probably typically have (although some of the movie is unintentionally funny - you'll know what I mean in the scene where someone "sees" Alice's vision). Every time good old Jacob took off his shirt, we had a nearly Beatles-sized reaction in the audience. Totally funny.

As to my thoughts on the movie - very faithful adaptation of the book. I actually sort of like movies like Harry Potter's "Prisoner of Azkaban" where they remain faithful to the story, but have little new touches either in the scenery or scenes like the shrunken head talking. I think it makes it more fun to have something unexpected. For me, there was nothing like that in "New Moon." I knew exactly what everyone was going to say and going to do the entire movie, and I think that made it a little less fun for me.

The production values on this movie are infinitely better than the first. The special effects probably won't want to make you laugh in this one. The cinematography/background scenery is just gorgeous. And everybody is very pretty in this one.

Now, I really like Kristen Stewart (Bella) and Robert Pattinson (Edward), and I think they do good work in this movie. Taylor Lautner (Jacob), not so much. I can't help it - every time I look at him I think of him as being Shark Boy (from "Shark Boy and Lava Girl" - possibly one of the stupidest movies ever made, but my second son had a phase where it was his favorite movie so I was forced to watch it a lot). Things I loved character wise with Jacob I felt like was sort of glossed over or Taylor Lautner wasn't able to play it so that we understood how he was feeling. That was a bit of a disappointment to me.

Apparently I'm the only one who didn't think this was the best movie ever made. Don't get me wrong - I did like it and my husband liked it ("Yeah, it was good," he just said in an offhand way), but I didn't love it. I understand that this makes me weird because every other person I've talked to fanatically loved it (and said it was the best movie they ever saw and that it made them more Team Jacob than Team Edward, which I don't get because we all pretty much know how that team thing works out in the end). And box office numbers were astronomical - and broke a lot of records - nipping at the heels of "The Dark Knight" and "Spider-Man 3" for best opening weekend.

If you read that article about the record breaking, you'll see that they're negotiating with Stephenie Meyer for "Breaking Dawn." If that were me, I'd be giving Summit Entertainment instructions on where to bring their armored truck with my boatload of money. (And I still can't wrap my mind around what it must be like to be Stephenie Meyer and to have caused all of this.)

Have you seen "New Moon?" What did you think? Will you go and see it if you haven't already? Do you have any expectations for the movie?