Soppy drivel

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2011)

I do so want to be fair to the Twiglet films and not condemn them out of hand just because of what they are, but they do make it so easy to be dismissive of them. To put it another way, a film which is not that good gives you plenty of things to make fun of when you are assembling a review, and Breaking Down part 1 is just such a film.
Sulky teenager Bella has finally got her man (or, rather, vampire), dishy (if moody and, on the basis of this film, incredibly stupid) 100-odd year old pasty-faced Edward. The entire first half of this film comprises wedding, honeymoon, and Bella's immediate (and problematic) pregnancy. If you have seen the trailer, then you needn't bother turning up for the first 45 minutes, because you don't find anything out during that period that you didn't learn from the trailer. This part of the film is terminally soppy - I mean, deeply drippy. So much so that it might even be off-putting to the drippy Twiglet teens who dote on this stuff (I don't mean to be rude, girls, but come on - this really is the soppiest drivel ever committed to celluloid).
The problem is that Bella and Edward have not only gone for no sex before marriage, they've also gone for no vampirising before marriage either so, when Bella falls pregnant with a half-vampire baby, she is still human. This means that the super-strong foetus proceeds to kick 7 bells out of her from inside, which wipes the smile off her face - oh, wait, Bella never has a smile on her face, does she? (actually, there are times during the wedding-y bits where she does - Kristen Stewart was so unrecognisable that I thought they had cast another actress for a moment).
The entire second half of the film is given over to Bella's pregnancy which looks increasingly likely to end with her death, the werewolf pack which seems to have its nose out of joint over something or other which completely escaped me, and Bella's werewolf friend and would-be second-string boyfriend Jacob keeping the two factions at bay and being angry at hubbie Edward for causing all this . Blahdie blahdie blah, it all arrives at an ending which is ripe for the start of what (oh please let it be so) should be the final part.
The first film was grim - desperately bad. The second film was terminally tedious. The third one I found myself enjoying, to my surprise. This one - it is laughable. For instance, on seeing that Bella is very noticeably pregnant (and looking a bit rough), lovelorn werewolf Jacob launches himself angrily at husband Edward with the words, "You did this to her!" I burst out laughing. Yes, mate - her husband got her pregnant: it is the sort of thing which sometimes happens on honeymoon, do you werewolves know nothing? Some of the Twiglets in the audience didn't find it as funny as I did, mind you.
The werewolves did angry telepathing among themselves while they were in doggy form, which was comical (I don't think it was meant to be). In human form, they started talking about imprinting. This is the first time the term has raised its head in the Twiglet movies. Previously I had understood it to mean that Canada Geese thought that a motorised hang-glider was their mother, but I didn't have a clue what it meant in this film. My only thought was that it would probably turn out to have some plot relevance, and so it does. Indeed, it turns out to be something of such importance that the fact that it was introduced just before the plot needs it, struck me as extraordinarily bad writing - we should have known about it a couple of films ago.
I could go on, but there seems little point. This, in my view, was a poor effort in a generally poor series, possibly - probably - because the source material is also poor.