film review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1

My unplanned and unexpected fall into all things Twilight continues. Somehow I found myself at a midnight screening of the latest installment, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1. I still don’t know how it happened but it did.

Of course, as I had mentioned in the post with clips and trailers of Breaking Dawn, I was kind of looking forward to this film. Not looking forward like, I was planning to see it at the first possible screening though. More like, I thought I’d give it a look on DVD. Oh well, what’s done is done.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been expecting much. Even though I thought Eclipse was alright, I wasn’t expecting anything – New Moon was that bad. Seriously, nothing happened in that movie. Nothing at all. For shame.

As it happens, Breaking Dawn is actually ok as well. Ok, not great. Or good. Just, ok. In all honesty, my biggest, biggest problem with the Twilight series is Kirsten Stewart. The girl can’t act. It’s a crying shame really because this, and Eclipse, would probably be good films if there was anything believable about Bella and Edward. Also – and it wouldn’t be an issue if the characters didn’t keep saying it – she’s just not that pretty. Every time they say it, which is more often than you’d think necessary, I wince. Really? I mean really?

The worst thing is that because she is so bad, it colours the entire series. I don’t understand what on earth Edward Cullen is meant to see in her. Except I suppose the point that he sees nothing in her, can’t tell what she’s thinking etc… Surely the possibility has occurred to him though that perhaps there’s nothing going on in there? Urgh.

And Jacob? What’s his excuse? I gather there might be something in the next film that explains that but I’ve still had to put up with 4 films of nonsense. And why is Edward so ok with her and Jacob? She even kissed him in the last film! That’s pretty much cheating in my book. He should’ve at least been a bit more pissed off. Is it supposed to be because he knows that Bella really and truly loves him? How can he tell? She doesn’t act like it.

But back to the film at hand. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1. Bit of mouthful. Apart from the massive problem of the relationship still being entirely unbelievable, it’s relatively reasonable. I would hesitate to say it is well paced – there’s a rather lengthy part of the film which, as far as I could tell, was only conceived so that Bella and Edward could kiss in front of varying colourful backdrops, but aside from that painful 20 minutes, it moves along quite well. Stuff happens, the plot moves forward, it’s a marked difference from the first two films. The action and CGI is even relatively decent, the wolves look good compared to how they did in the earlier films – oh, well… I just remembered the ridiculous talking wolves scenes, let’s forget that happened. *shiver*

One of the things I really liked about the film is that it’s quite funny in parts. Genuinely funny. I would have liked more of that. I think it also helped my enjoyment that Kristen Stewart didn’t do much for a lot of the film, what with being quite sick carrying her demon child. Jacob continues to be the star performer in the series. It helps that he has more to do than anyone else, but he does that angry broody thing well. I hope he gets a chance to be a real actor after this.

The fact is, it’s really not as bad as it’s being made out to be. There isn’t anything in it that’s offensively bad (aside from Stewart). The story is pretty interesting tbh. The stuttered attempts to make Twilight more mature are, for the most part, successful; the honey part of the ‘moon was dealt with particularly well. Other parts, were… perhaps alluded to more than dealt with…

I’m surprised there wasn’t more about… not having the child. You know, since they were all pretty sure it was a demon who was killing her from the inside out. The films’ seem to have quite a conservative agenda in the sense – no sex before marriage, it’s a baby not a fetus etc. I guess they didn’t want to dwell on that aspect, it is a young adult film after all. It could have made for interesting debate though. Oh well.

It’s hard in a way to point at the things I didn’t like about the film. I guess it’s just because the core of the story is so rotten to me, it makes it a bad apple. Everything that happens is… fine but… Yes, I think it’s just that… how do I describe it…? They’re very bitty films. The cast is so large and it’s so full of small roles that it feels like the film expects you to fill in the blanks in the characters – all the characters. Except that I don’t know any of the characters. Who are these people? What are their motivations? Why am I watching this film? It’s a very haphazard watch.

Except for the end. The end was pretty good, including the bit during the credits. It kinda looks like the next film might have some interesting stuff going on. In fact, during the end credits all I could think was, why couldn’t this be the starting point? You could have summed up these last 4 films in a long pre-credit sequence and done a few films on what happens next – that looks like a story worth watching.

6/10