Robert Pattinson and his stomach cramps – I mean, aching unrequited love – are less oppressive in this sequel to Twilight, given that he has far less screen time. But the trade off is you’re now stuck with Taylor Lautner and his relentless shirtlessness. It’s not just Lautner – none of his werewolf friends feel the need to wear a shirt, no matter that a majority of the movie’s scenes take place in pouring rain. This sort of silliness continues to reign in the wildly popular soap series about a vampire named Edward (Pattinson) who is in love with a gloomy teen named Bella (Kristen Stewart). As in Twilight, this all means to work as a thinly – very thinly – veiled metaphor for the agony of abstinence. (“Doing it,” for Edward, could mean literally devouring Bella.) Here, Bella begs Edward to bite her so they can be together. In other words, she’s quite the tease, and when he refuses and leaves town, what choice does she have but to make her werewolf friend pant instead? In a ripe story like this, shirtlessness makes perfect sense.
