“Movie” Review: Twilight, Breaking Dawn Part 1

That title is either a threat or a promise depending on who you are, and for me it’s most definitely a threat. I’ve been as patient as anyone possibly could be with the Twilight films (I actually liked parts of the first and third ones) but this fourth installment is a real turd. So far, a lot of the criticism about Twilight has been that Bella isn’t a great role model for young girls (and I agree she’s a sorry one), but what kind-of role models does Twilight have for young boys? You’ve got Jacob, a nice guy who can not move past a girl who doesn’t want him and even when she marries someone else, he acts obsessed and is willing to kill his friends to “protect” her, no matter how stupid she acts. Then you’ve got Edward, the world’s drippiest, most joyless vampire. What a pair. In Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward once and for all prove they’re perfect for each other as they skulk around the whole movie looking ridiculously inarticulate and constipated, as if craft services just fed them both spoiled cheese and they aren’t sure whether to throw up or ride it out.

What Works: The single best scene in Breaking Dawn Part 1 comes a minute into the credits, when we see Michael Sheen’s led Vampire pack plotting…something for part 2. At least it looks like something interesting could happen in part 2 instead of heavy handed anti-abortion allegories. Also, the sturdy Billy Burke (as Bella’s dad) comes off looking well as the only cast member who doesn’t seem to belong to a cult.

What Doesn’t Work: The acting is one note and clumsy almost by design (one day they’ll figure out that teen angst doesn’t mean acting like you have Autism). The direction is incompetent (what happened to you Bill Condon?), turning on a dime from soft, tender puppy love to gory-while-still-soft. And the script is faithfully braindead to the dirt-road-sorry novel its based on written by a devout Mormon housewife. Maybe that’s why this movie has such obvious (and ridiculous) anti-abortion allegories, and no one seems to think it’s weird that Bella is getting married at 18 years old without any mention of college, working, or any goals but raising a monstrous hell-baby for her that leaves her looking like a Somalian refugee by the time it’s finally born. [Leave it to the Twilight movies to make even a honeymoon look like literally tortured angst.]

What I Would Have Done Differently: If I were a studio executive and someone brought me a painfully earnest young adult book where the lead character is a teenage girl who decides to risk killing herself to give birth to a monstrous vampire baby after having unintentionally rough sex with her mumbling vampire husband, I would have laughed them out of the room. If someone were to tell me that not only did that movie get made, but it’s made 200 million so far, I’d think the joke was on me.