Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

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Breaking Dawn Part 1

The Twilight films are a guilty pleasure. As someone who hangs with the film nerd set, it's fun to trash Stephenie Meyer's angstified hyper-romantic sparkly "cold ones" (we're forbidden to call them "vampires"). Yet, the inner 15-year-old girl in all of us can't help getting caught up in the story a little, if only because we want Bella to just get on with it and pick Edward or Jacob for god's sake.

While that choice would seem to have been made by the end of Eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 has inadvertenly picked up Bella's indecisiveness and can't decide whether it wants to be a drama or a raucous comedy. In a series where no two movies were directed by the same filmmaker, a steady evolution can be seen from Twilight to New Moon as both the mythology and the films improve. Now Bill Condon, a respectable director with such titles as Gods and Monsters, Kinsey and Dreamgirls under his belt, steps in and forces us to wonder if he's taking his work seriously.

Condon wastes no time giving everyone what they came to see: Taylor Lautner's bare chest and abs. The very first shot of the film is Jacob ripping off his shirt in a lupine tantrum set off by Bella and Edward's wedding invitation. David Slade's Eclipse joked about Jacob's persistent bare torso, but this shot appeared to be an excuse to get one more cheer from the audience that was already screaming when the title card appeared. It also seemed to be Condon's way of saying "OK, that's out of the way, now we're going to do things MY way." Unless I missed something, Lautner doesn't appear shirtless for the rest of Breaking Dawn - Part 1.

Sadly, Condon zigs when he should zag and vice-versa. Doing it his own way means Edward doesn't sparkle when in full sun, a huge break from Twilight canon. It also means we get to see what people are calling the "wolf circle," as Jacob's angry wolf pack circles up in a logging camp for us to hear human voices screaming their telepathic conversation. This was a serious moment presented so ineptly it had even the biggest Twi-hards in the room rolling in their seats. Calling it corny would be an insult to corn, and a gross understatement.

Condon can't be blamed for everything in Breaking Dawn - Part 1. Kristen Stewart's Bella asks Edward at one point, "Why can't you see how completely happy I am?" How could you expect anyone to see that when your facial expressions alternate between glum and morose with an occasional detour into dour for four entire movies? It's not your wishy-washiness that makes us hate you, Bella. That's just the icing on your frosty frozen cake. Stay through the credits for an important scene with the Vulturi doing a fine impression of the bad guys from Dark City (and the most wasteful under-use of the great talent Christopher Heyerdahl ever).

Eclipse was a remarkably watchable film that built tension until a fantastic action sequence with vamps vs werewolves and ended with a truly creepy encounter with the Vulturi. Breaking Dawn - Part 1 was largely a snoozefest that spent over an hour on the wedding and honeymoon before anything happened to move the plot forward. It then alternated between grotesquely serious and just absurdly, unbelievably weird, never approaching the same level of intensity we saw at the climax of Eclipse.

Breaking Dawn

I am a Twilight fan. With that said, I was disappointed that Edward did not sparkle. Weren't they on a tropical island, with sun? Oh and he shook the hand of the pilot, but didn't the pilot notice that his skin was ice cold and hard? Um, thinking they forgot about key things in the vampire world. I was also not prepared for how intense the birth scene was. I mean, I was able to deal with it, but I could hear all the young girls gasping in the audience. All in all, if you are a fan, you will love the movie. If you are not a fan, then you will find any reason to tear it apart.

Looking forward to Breaking Dawn, despite the shocking reviews

I'm going to see this next week and totally get what you mean when you say 'guilty pleasure'. BDP1 is getting a lot of bad press (one of my Twi-hard mates saw it yesterday and even she said it was a little embarrassing in parts). The ringing cash-tills will no doubt make the studio execs happy though... :-)

I'm a fan and I didn't love

I'm a fan and I didn't love this movie! I could have skipped seeing it altogether and not missed much at all.

Heyerdahl

Christopher Heyerdahl is the only truly great thing about the Twilight saga! Team Marcus! :)

A so-so fan

I don't love the books, I don't hate them either. I think the last one is good, the first ones are average at best. That being said, the not sparkling thing in the new movie is stupid. If a book says vampires sparkle, and you have a vampire on a sunny beach, well duh, the guy should sparkle, especially if he did so in previous movies. I was wondering for some time how were they gonna be able to make the birth scene 13-PG acceptable, and I have to say they did a very good job with it, although the poison flowing in the blood scenes reminded me more of CSI or House episode than a romantic film.