New Moon (12A)

STOP reading this now. It must be the most pointless review ever written.

Because let's be frank. You already know whether you're going to see New Moon or not.

And if you're not, you won't care what I've got to say about it.

You won't care that this is head and shoulders above the first Twilight film. Nor will you care that new director Chris Weitz is the best thing that could have happened to the series.

And you probably couldn't give a baboon's dingleberries that it features three unexpectedly good performances from its hot young leads either.

Because it's Twilight, innit? And Twilight's for loo-oo-oosers.

But if you ARE going to see it, you're in luck. Because astonishingly - and I speak as someone who greeted the first film with a resounding "meh" - this is superb.

The film, which sticks religiously to Stephenie Meyer's book, picks up where the first volume left off, with Bella (Kristen Stewart) turning 18.

She's still with World's Sexiest Corpse Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) - who looks like a black-and- white Jedward on 'roids, constantly trying to let out a silent-but-deadly.

But Ed decides he and his vampire family must leave the town of Forks for good - partly because of suspicion from the locals, partly because his brother Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) wants to eat his missus.

So Bella's alone once more, damned to a life of moping and bad indie music.

Fortunately, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a Quileute Native American, offers her a shoulder to cry on - albeit a shoulder rippling with more hormones than a discount beefburger.

Jacob is... what's the word? Oh yes. Hunk-a-licious. He and Bella strike up a will-they, won't-they friendship that constantly teeters on the edge of sauce. And it's a credit to Weitz and his cast that they manage to dodge the emo stereotypes that marred the first film, and make these characters sizzle.

Kristen is a dream. She's never had such a good chance to flex her acting pecs - and all the promise of her great lip-biting turn in Into The Wild comes good here.

And Taylor? Why, he's flexing his pecs too. At every ruddy opportunity. It just gets daft, frankly. When Bella falls off a motorbike and cuts her head, Jacob rips his entire shirt off like he's about to bandage a wounded rhino. Often, he's just striding around the woods topless for no reason. So are his mates. It's like Hampstead Heath out there.

As all Twilight fans know, Jacob and his pals are werewolves, and this time the tribe protects Bella when a couple of evil vampires turn up.

It draws Jacob and Bella closer. So, will she go with Wolfman? Will the vampire steal her back?

Or - just throwing this out there, love - will she get a normal boyfriend, who doesn't want to bite her neck or drag his bum around on the living room carpet?

New Moon will make serious money, whether it is any good or not. So it's a delight to report that it's so unnecessarily decent. Weitz - who's got a solid record with book adaptations (About A Boy and The Golden Compass) - kicks off with a dream sequence that says more about the main characters in two minutes than the last Harry Potter film managed in 2½ hours. These are real teenagers. They fret, they sulk and they lust. They don't run around playing kiss-chase in magic school.

Visually it's a serious step up too. Take the chase sequence between the werewolves and bad vampire Victoria (Rachelle LeFevre), scored with a Thom Yorke track. Or the nicely-staged climax in Italy with a predictably ace turn from Michael Sheen as vampire royalty Aro.

We're miles away from Supermassive Black Hole being played over a duff baseball scene.

This is the moment that the Twilight Saga comes of age, and the series could go either way from here. And given the third film Eclipse is out next summer, we've not got long to wait to find out.

But either way, fans will be delighted with this ep. And sceptics? Hey. You should give it a try. Except you won't, will you?

Because Twilight's for loo-oo-oosers. Isn't it?

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