Revenge of the Department-Store Manikins

Rating: 2/10 (29 November 2012)

This movie cost a reported $120,000,000. In only 2 weeks, it's already doubled that take at the box office, but what I'd like to know is where all that money went. Not on sets or locations, since it's mainly set in the woods. Elegant costumes, to be sure, but you're not gonna blow 9 digits' worth of bucks on epaulets. The effects are sparse and nothing special. Fersher not on the writing (execrable screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg).
So it has to have been on the actors. And boy, did they ever NOT get their money's worth. The entire film consists of people standing around like statues, reading dialog to each other, with an occasional flicker of attempted facial expression. Really, this is not an exaggeration. 80% of the film is literally people just standing there like an array of department-store manikins, spouting inane, vapid dialog.
The entire premise of the film is based on the idea that the Volturi, self-appointed overlords of the vampire world, will not tolerate a human child being turned into a vampire (with some justification, based on terrible experiences in the past, when the tykes had tantrums and couldn't control their appetites). And now the Volturi mistakenly believe that Bella and Edward's new child, the regrettably named Renesmee, is one such, and they're coming to wreak vengeance on her and the entire Cullen clan — having politely given several weeks advance notice. All of this could have been cleared up with a little home video, or perhaps a Skype call. Ditto for the Cullens' attempts to round up witnesses to little Nessie's amazing growth spurt (newborn to an apparent age 6 in a couple of weeks). Could they just ring up their friends on their cell phones or e-mail them? Nooooooo, gotta travel twice around the world to ask them in person. And then they all show up in the Pacific northwoods, where they get to stand around like statues like everyone else. When there finally IS a flurry of action, the cameras move so rapidly and jerkily that you can't get any sense at all of who's doing what to whom.
This is a terrible movie, all posing and posturing and protestations of undying love less sincere than a Twinkies commercial.