Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Poor Bella Swan. The heroine of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series can’t catch a break with her favorite monster men.

As diehard fans know, Bella (Kristen Stewart) fell in love with vegan vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in “Twilight,” the first movie based on Meyer’s wildly popular books. He and his blood-sucking family skip town early in the second film, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” after Bella cuts her finger opening a birthday present, triggering a frightening attack by a member of the Cullen clan.

Pining for her beady-eyed love, Bella fills the hole in her heart with hunky Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a childhood friend with an Incredible Hulk physique. Sadly, this relationship also hits the rocks after Bella learns that Jacob is part of a ferocious werewolf tribe at war with the vampires.

There seem to be two lessons here. First, date your own species. Second, don’t drastically cut the screen time of one of your franchise-making co-stars.

The teen-romance charm that made “Twilight” a critical and financial hit is missing from “New Moon.” The switch of directors, from Catherine Hardwicke to Chris Weitz, is partly responsible. So is the absence of Pattinson from much of the film. Stewart doesn’t have the same potent chemistry with Lautner that she has with Pattinson, who returns toward the end of part two for a bizarre suicide mission in Italy.

Bella has recurring nightmares during “New Moon.” So did I, mostly over the wretched dialogue (“It’s not about your soul. You’re just not good for me”), endless shots of a shirtless Lautner and an unintentionally comical scene where Edward faces an ancient vampire tribunal led by Aro (Michael Sheen), whose scary voice was modeled on the music-hating Blue Meanies in “Yellow Submarine.”

“The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” from Summit Entertainment, is playing across the U.S. Rating: *

‘The Blind Side’

Michael Oher’s life reads like a Hollywood script -- and now it is one.

A homeless, 340-pound black teenager from Memphis, Tennessee, Oher found refuge with a wealthy white family, earned a college scholarship, became an All-American football player and was picked in the first round of the NFL draft.

This improbable story, told in a best-seller by Bloomberg News columnist Michael Lewis, has been turned into a saccharine biopic that drains most of the harshness from the drama and makes Oher almost a secondary character to Leigh Anne Tuohy, the spunky do-gooder perkily played by Sandra Bullock.

Theismann Hit

Tuohy and her husband Sean (Tim McGraw), a former college basketball star who became a millionaire owner of fast-food franchises, deserve great credit for giving Oher a second chance in life. But “The Blind Side,” written and directed by John Lee Hancock, focuses too much on them and not enough on Oher (Quinton Aaron), apparently so shy that he barely speaks more than Harpo Marx.

Lewis intertwined Oher’s bio with another intriguing story -- the growing importance of football’s offensive left tackle, the player who protects the quarterback from potentially dangerous “blind side” hits. While the movie opens with replays of Lawrence Taylor’s famous 1985 sack of Joe Theismann - - which fractured the quarterback’s leg and ended his illustrious career -- that angle is then dropped until a brief mention at the very end.

Oher is now a rookie with the Baltimore Ravens. His life is more inspiring than this movie.

“The Blind Side,” from Warner Bros. Pictures, is playing across the U.S. Rating: *1/2

What the Stars Mean:

****          Excellent
***           Good
**            Average
*             Poor
(No stars)    Worthless

(Rick Warner is the movie critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Rick Warner in New York at rwarner1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 21, 2009 00:01 EST