Saga Saved with Return of Original Twilight Charm

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2011)

I didn't anticipate BD1 with much interest. I didn't buy my tickets early, didn't plan to attend the midnight opening, didn't watch the first three movies last week in preparation. In fact, I just saw BD1 this afternoon, five days into the run, in a nearly empty theater, and only because I had to out of respect for the books.
I'm a champion of the books. If you read more than the first installment of Twilight, then you understand the fascination of the story - the situational and moral complications, the historic development of the characters, the "how the heck is this going to be resolved?" hook. The movies naturally suffer from the problem of bringing a novel to the screen.
The first Twilight movie seemed a fluke. Its low budget, independent director, unknown ensemble of actors and lots of influence from the author, Stephenie Meyer, and thousands of passionate book fans came together and miraculously created an artful, quirky, and very cool film with an awesome soundtrack.
But the franchise was born and big bucks created two terrible sequels, New Moon and Eclipse. They had none of the magic that was Twilight.
Breaking Dawn 1 brings back the magic! The great musical score and soundtrack are back, the costumes and art direction are gorgeous, and the actors are an ensemble once again. My only complaint is that it is over-edited. I'm all for cutting movies to the essentials, but BD1 could have lingered a bit more on many scenes. For instance, Edward's back story (involving a scene from The Bride of Frankenstein) is so briefly told that I doubt it makes sense to anyone who doesn't know the book. Bella's deterioration during pregnancy is amazing (how did they do that?), but the director wimped out on showing the audience how Edward got the baby out (and why he had to it that way). Rather than explaining imprinting through the story, Jacob's imprinting is pretty much communicated to us, insufficiently, through Edward. It just seemed too rushed. And why? The film is only 108 minutes. If its audience is committed fans, why not give us more?
Overall, I not only enjoyed the movie, I was impressed with it. Bella's transformations, the excellent cast, the flashbacks, the soundtrack and score were all on the mark. Then I saw that it was produced by Stephenie Meyer herself. She must be the charm that was lacking in 2 and 3. So congratulations to Ms Meyer for producing a movie that gives us what we loved about the first film.
I'm looking forward to the midnight opening of BD2!