Movie Review: “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1” starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner

At this point, the Twilight movies are almost impossible to review. Fans are going to see the newest film, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 regardless of its quality and the rest of the world has likely already formed an opinion of the franchise. Nevertheless, here we go.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past three years (or have good cinematic instincts) and have not seen the previous three Twilight movies, here’s a recap.

• Twilight: Bella Swan (played by world famous mouth-breather Kristen Stewart) faces the danger of vampires while being torn between her two loves, a vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a werewolf named Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).
• New Moon: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) faces the danger of vampires while being torn between her two loves, a vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a werewolf named Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).
• Eclipse: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) faces the danger of vampires while being torn between her two loves, a vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a werewolf named Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 breaks all the rules. This time Bella Swan is marrying Edward Cullen and faces the danger of a vampire inside of her. Groundbreaking, I know.

As easy it would be to bash this movie just for being a Twilight movie, I prefer to take the high road…and bash it for being a terrible film. In all fairness this is not the worst movie in the franchise, still, that does not make it a good film. Breaking Dawn primarily suffers because it is only one act of a three act story. The entire film is the wedding and the pregnancy. Maybe people who have read the books would expect this, but let’s be honest, the only reason this movie is split into two pieces is to double the box office revenue. I don’t know what would be worse, two shitty 2-hour movies or one shitty 3-hour movie…I guess we’ll never know.

Either way, the act structure is only one of several problems. Stemming from this comes pacing problems, tone problems and overall story problems…nothing happens until the last 10-15 minutes of this 2-hour movie. And let’s not forget about the acting – my God – Kristen Stewart constantly looks like she’s just about to remember something and Taylor Lautner’s “smoldering” performance is about as threatening as a box full of kittens…really effeminate kittens.

The only reason I say that this is not the worst film in the franchise is because it just doesn’t take any chances. There’s a really bizarre argument between wolves with disembodied voices, but other than that it’s simply a 2-hour sequence of people looking confused and/or concerned.

If this were any other movie, I would begin to question the logic of certain elements in the story. For example, if vampires don’t age, how does the baby develop? This is going to be a major problem for at least one of the characters in Twilight. But who are we kidding – there’s no place for logic in Twilight.

If you’re actually using this review to determine whether or not to see this movie – don’t. Go watch True Blood or Interview with the Vampire or Let the Right One In instead.

Worth Your Money

-Not Worth Your Money-

Worth Somebody Else’s Money