New Moon: I'm on Team Steve

My husband loves me.... a lot.

How do I know? I know, beyond the Valentine's Day breakfast and the fact that he empties the dishwasher every morning before heading out to work. I know, with full certainty, because on Friday night, he agreed to come see New Moon with me and a theater full of screaming teenagers. The man is nothing short of a saint.

And when I ooheed right along with the barely pubescent audience when Edward (Robert Pattinson) came on the screen and when Jacob (Taylor Lautner) took off this shirt, he didn't get up and walk away, disgusted with his silly wife. He gave me a little amused look, and turned back to the movie, no doubt planning all the war movies he was going to get us to see now that he had agreed to this vampire flick.

I loved the Twilight books. I began Twilight last Thanksgiving and didn't come up for air until Christmas when I finished Breaking Dawn. But I was bitterly disappointed by the first Twilight movie. I found the acting stilted and the special effects comical.

But New Moon was a different story. I'm not sure if it was the bigger budget, the new director, or Jacob's incredibly buff body, but it worked. The acting hit the right note. The special effects were credible. And the colors and scenes in Italy with the Volteri were striking. I still struggled with some of the Edward lines to Bella, a little too intense and serious to be taken seriously. I may get crucified for this by all the Edward fans out there, but I just wanted to tell him to lighten up! But then again, I had the same frustration with the book, probably due to the fact that I'd rather crawl into a warm and comfy bed than a cold and hard one. The nail in the Edward coffin, as far as I'm concerned, were the sparkling body scenes that still didn't look right, and when he took his clothes off for the Volteri.

But after all the gossip about whether Taylor Lautner would be able to bulk up enough to play the movie, and all the pressure for him to quit, I had to admire how he rose to the challenge. He not only looked amazing, completely believable as a scrawny boy overnight metamorphasized into a werewolf, but he also acted the part perfectly. The bulk of the movie was on his shoulders and he carried it well. The werewolf special effects and scenes were amazing, making these massive creatures into bonafide characters, no small feat when you're talking about monstrous wolves. And Taylor Lautner straddled the balance of moody teenager raging against this massive change in his life and pining Bella fan and gave the film the tension it needed, and that I was hoping it would have.

I guess this makes me firmly in Team Jacob, at least for this movie. But really, I'm with Team Steve, the man who endured all of this Twilight fanaticism and pretended to enjoy it!