Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart again suffer mightily as a tortured teenage vampire and his seriously sulky soul mate in this follow-up to 2008’s toothless Twilight, but not nearly as much as the audience does in enduring 130 minutes of dreadful dialogue, awful acting and co-star Taylor Lautner and his amazing abs.

Based on the second book of the bestselling series by Stephenie Meyer, it sees Stewart being deserted by benign bloodsucker boyfriend Pattinson and falling for Lautner the werewolf before rushing off to Italy to stop Pattinson from sacrificing himself at the hands of a powerful vampire family.

As with the first flick, there’s too much tortured-teen melodrama and too little actual bloodsucking. That is, unless you’re a teenage girl or a fan of the books. In which case you probably won’t mind the scene of Stewart lying in her bed, clutching her stomach and screaming out her I-miss-him-so-much pain to the point where her dad wants to kick her out of the house. Permanently.

It would all actually be somewhat tolerable if Chris Weitz’s competent direction contained even an ounce of the offbeat energy that Catherine Hardwicke lent the first flick, or if the stars delivered their dialogue in something besides a monotone. Granted, they can’t really help it if the screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg is chock full of cheesy lines.

Pattinson, the odd man out this time around, basically stands around saying swoon-worthy things, while Stewart broods so much you want Cher to slap her and tell her to snap out of it. As for Lautner, while he certainly looks physically imposing, strutting around shirtless for most of the movie, he utterly lacks as an actual actor, coming off as petulant when he should sound enraged.

For me, the best parts of both films are when real physical action occurs. In this case, that would be whenever Lautner or any of his clan transform into huge, impressively-rendered werewolves and attack people. There’s also the confrontation with said vampire family in Italy–some of whom sport freaky red contacts–where Pattinson valiantly battles one of its members to protect Stewart.

Which brings me to British actor Michael Sheen, who played a werewolf in the Underworld films (which this franchise is starting to resemble) but here steals the sullen show as the head of the vampire family. He makes his undead character elegant but menacing, and in doing so gives the movie a faint, but brief, pulse. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Release Date: Saturday March 20th

Drama/Fantasy/Romance

Rated PG-13

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