Beautifully filmed - but

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2011)

I am a huge Twilight fan and I enjoyed it. They did some things really well. There are a couple of faults.
Good points: The wedding is lovely. The natural setting in the woods was magical. Liked how they used music from the first Twilight movie. The back of her wedding dress was nice but the front was a bit severe and matronly. Overall photography is quite pretty throughout. The beach house in Brazil is stunning and the beach and waterfall are quite magical. For those who want to see the two kissing you sure get a lot of it. The love making scenes are not over the top quite chaste in fact.
The humor when there is some is quite unexpected like what happened to the bed.
The makeup and effects used for making Bella gaunt and sick were very convincing.
The wolves move quite naturally and don't look too gigantic or CGI.
Faults: Didn't like the wolves vs vampires over the baby issue. Felt unnecessary melodramatic and contrived. It feels like much ado about nothing and the wolves were taking themselves too seriously. But I suspect that is a story fault not a fault with the movie making.
The Cullen house keeps changing in appearance - I know they switched houses but it just looks too different.
The whole birth was kind of gross and gory with all the blood and stuff. Bella's suffering was too drawn out. The romance was kind of nullified after that. Left a down feeling in the end.
After waiting a year I wish they had just had one movie instead of 2 parts - there isn't enough story to break into 2 parts. Felt a bit draggy at times and it wouldn't have been if it had moved faster. But everyone knows why it had to be split up $$$.
Not much vampire action - got to wait for part 2 for that.
K Stew looks a bit too worried for too much of the first part that is supposed to be happy and romantic. She should have looked more excited and really happy for some scenes.
Taylor's scowling is a bit repetitive. Another story fault though.
Overall of course if you are a fan you have to see it. Beautiful filming but not enough story for a whole movie. On the downside there is some heaviness and a depressive vibe in the second half. I still liked the first Twilight movie the most because it was fun and exciting and romantic. This one gives a bit of a bitter aftertaste but hopefully taken with the second part it will seem better as a whole. Is it as good as it should be? Probably - not much better or worse given the restrictions of the story.