For blokes, the point of a first date... is to get a second. So anyone thinking of taking a prospective  girlfriend to the latest Twilight sequel should think again. New Moon equals home alone - a movie guaranteed to kill off any potential romance - stone dead.

The theory goes like this: A good first date movie for men should star a male lead who doesn't set the bar too high - a mid-range standard of maledom that's not too hard to live up to. You know, pleasant, normal looking actors - Tobey Maguire say, or even more unthreatening, that geek chic duo, Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg.

Certainly not Robert Pattinson. From the moment his chiselled chin appears on the screen in New Moon, any man on a date is doomed. He's model handsome, he's pale and pouty, he glitters, they swoon... and you're toast.

That's a sweeping generalisation of course. There must be plenty of women left cold by Pattinson's charms. The Easter island head, the mumbling self-absorption, the ridiculous spoofed-up hair. To be fair about the hair - he is a vampire, so he can't look in a mirror. Anyway, judging from the reaction at the screening I went to, it's hard to believe he doesn't have some universal appeal. When he first appeared at the start of the movie, a slo-mo wander across a meadow, there was a sharp, collective intake of breath in the cinema - enough to create an eye-popping vacuum in the theatre and set off a blitz of OMG! R-PATTZ! type texting.

Sure, you can write it all off as just besotted tweens who were doing the hyperventilating. And certainly, they're in the majority for early screenings. But with New Moon earnings set to sail past the original on the back of record pre-sales, it's not just pocket money powering the box-office.  Pattinson's appeal runs deep.  Or rather Edward Cullen's appeal runs deep.  Now this is where any guy on a first date is really in trouble. It's tough to measure up to Pattinson, but impossible to compete against Edward... because he's an idea - the perfect idea of the moody, 'bad boy' boyfriend; the perfect, cool but dangerous fantasy. His idea of danger is playing baseball in lightning storms and fighting werewolves. Most blokes' idea of danger is five-a-side in the rain and a scrap on the night bus home. And there's more: The Cullen's achingly cool Bauhaus pad, the Prada clothes, the sporty Volvo and, get this, he's ready to commit... for eternity. And just when you're sinking into your seat muttering "what a git" into you popcorn it all gets worse. Jacob Black shows up.

The last time we saw Jacob, he was a fairly ordinary 15 year old.  Since then he appears to have spent every day at the gym, returning home to wolf down power shakes. He's huge, ridiculously so, and the filmmakers take every opportunity to rub it in. There's one particular scene which drew more gasps than any of Edward's, languid CK One moments in the woods. Bella has become something of an adrenalin junkie. Putting herself in danger brings out the protective instincts of the missing Edward, who now only appears as a ghostly floating head. So, off she races on a motorbike she's just finished renovating with Jacob. "Don't be reckless" says Edward's head, inadvertly causing her to fall off the bike and and bash her skull on a rock. Now, here comes Jacob to her rescue, speeding up behind her. Screetch to a halt, race to her side and off goes the T-shirt ( to dab her wounds of course) to reveal the kind of spray-on abs only seen on the cover of Men's Health. Thanks Taylor Lautner. And not only that, but there's a whole bunch of these people - the 'Wolf Pack', who wander around like some steroid-al boyband in seach of a photoshoot. Truly depressing.

New Moon doesn't even have the decency to offer any truly shocking, hand-grabbing moments. Poor show for a vampire movie, a missed opportunity for a date movie. The film is a curiously slow and bloodless affair- the 130 minutes running time largely given up to the simmering relationships beween, Bella, Edward and Jacob. And, to be fair, that all works well - one, long brilliant Hollywood chemistry lesson. It's just, if you're hoping to find a film that sets a romantic mood off screen, you'd have more luck with renting Antichrist.