Trying To Make Dachau Look Beguiling

Rating: 3/10 (18 November 2011)

The Twilight Saga [4.1]: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (1:57, PG-13) — fantasy: supernatural, biggie, sequel, OSIT romantics
My friend Hope says "I'll see Twilight the way it was meant to be seen: with a teenaged girl." Good advice, because there's not much here for anyone else.
Box Office Mojo estimates that Summit Entertainment and director Bill Condon threw $110 million at this project, but it's virtually impossible to tell where it went. Not to the location shots in Rio de Janeiro, which Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella nee Swan (Kristen Stewart) pass thru, VERY briefly, on the way to their own private island for their honeymoon. Not for the single other location used for the rest of the movie, the Cullens' snazzy but completely isolated 3-story house in the woods of the Pacific northwest. Not for the outdoor wedding under the trees. Not, based on total lines of dialog, on the large supporting cast. Not on the minimal special effects, which mainly consist of shadowy shots of fast-moving werewolves and close-ups of metamorphosing corpuscles that could have been lifted straight from 1966's Fantastic Voyage.
And certainly not on the screenplay (by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the hyper-best-selling novels by Stephenie Meyer).
I'm guessing the big bux may have gone into either make-up or CGI for Stewart, who couldn't possibly have undergone in real life the transformation into the emaciated, hollow-eyed Dachau casualty shown on screen, victim of what can charitably be called a "problem pregnancy" that runs its course in less than 2 months after the, um, rambunctious wedding night she spends with her attentive but enthusiastic new groom.
This is a movie that tries to have it all possible ways with the moral issues. No sex until after marriage (and not a lot even then, either, it seems), and it's swell that the woman enjoys it, but the guy should remain dubious. Respect a woman's decision about what to do with her own body when it comes to abortion, but for heaven's sake don't encourage the practice, because fersher things will always turn out all right in the end. Use vigilante justice as long as the people you're dispatching are themselves potential killers and you feel real bad about it decades later. Do take advantage of friendship and hospitality (that would be Taylor Lautner as Jacob, hanging with his new vampire allies), but feel free to throw around a few death threats at your hosts, because hey, what are friends for, after all? Insist on the letter of the law, no matter how much blood has to be spilled as a result, but remember that a higher law can always trump a lesser one.
Considering that our heroine has spent 3 entire movies looking forward to her wedding day, it's perplexing that she seemed to be the grimmest, glummest bride in any movie not made in Iran. And the awkward turns that each of her friends got at the microphone during the reception were just embarrassing all around. It's hard to believe that Rosenberg actually got paid for this. Only Lautner gets a few good lines, but they're delivered at wildly inappropriate moments.
Mainly, the movie just drags. It appears that none of the characters have any lives at all outside of wondering how Bella is or what she's doing at this very moment. Even when she's right there in the room with them, they can think of nothing better to do than just stand around looking at her.
There are 2 kind of interesting things that happen at the end, but by then you've sat thru 1:45 worth of the kind of pacing, dialog, first-name overusage, improbably well-kempt people, heavy breathing, and extreme close-ups that even TV soap operas can't sustain any more.
It'll probably make its production costs back by Sunday.