Breaking Dawn - Part 1 Serves As A Mediocre Comedy

Rating: 1/10 (16 December 2011)

Last night I went to go see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. I should lay a few facts out on the table. First, I have read and own all of the books. Second, this is the first of the movies that I have not seen at midnight. Third, I waited until almost a month after its release because I could not get through that trailer without bursting out laughing and I did not want to be attacked by rabid Twihards. Fourth, I consumed half a pitcher of a Donnie Daiquiri at my local Cinebarre while viewing this film. Now that I have put that out in the open, onto the review.
The fourth installment of The Twilight Saga brings us to the event many avid fans have been waiting for, the wedding of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). The movie begins by showing us a sequence of people getting the waterproof invitation to aforementioned wedding, set to an unnecessarily sweeping score. Of course young Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) is not happy about this turn of events and morphs into a werewolf to deal with his troubles. They get married, finally have sex, and 13 days later it is discovered that Bella is pregnant with an aggressively kicking little... something That Bella insists on carrying despite the fact that it is killing her.
Visually this is the best of the franchise. Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) brings polish to the film that the others lack. There is a sense of balance and purpose to his shots. It t seems as if Condon was trying to make something out of very little. Other props go to the special effects used to show Bella's transformation from healthy 18 year-old to a literal corpse. There are moments where they show her bones looking as if they are trying to poke through her skin and her complexion looks more like that of a zombie than a human. That however, is where the positives end.
The script, written by Melissa Rosenberg, at times feels more like a pro-life argument than entertainment. While some characters acknowledge that whatever is growing inside of Bella is slowly draining her life and should not be carried to term, others insist that Bella should sacrifice anything for it. They even go so far as to correct anytime someone says fetus or thing, repeatedly saying that it is a baby. The first time it was not annoying, it merely clarified how the different characters viewed what was growing inside of Bella, but after the 5th time it felt a little redundant. Add into the mix some fight scenes that have so much CGI it is difficult to distinguish who is fighting who and it makes you miss the moments at the beginning where Bella seems to be terrified of getting married and the 10 minute sequence of her trying to entice her new husband to have sex with her.
The acting in this movie remains mediocre, which is a rise from where we began in Twilight. Stewart still does not know how to show emotion, unless it is complete discomfort, Pattinson still has a blank stare and slight grimace on his face at all times, even as his wife is dying, and Lautner is trying.
This movie tries to act like it is a lot more epic than it is so here is the warning: Despite what the music will have you to think nothing in this story is really epic, nothing in this story is good, nothing in this story is really compelling at this point. However, if you liked the previous installments go see it. Or if you want to get drunk and laugh your ass off for two hours.