Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson & Taylor Lautner
Directed By: Bill Condon
Screenplay By: Melissa Rosenberg
Based on the Novel By: Stephenie Meyer
Produced By: Wyck Godfrey, Karen Rosenfelt & Stephenie Meyer
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 117 minutes
Website: www.breakingdawn-themovie.com
Budget: $127 million (estimated)
Genre: Fantasy / Romance
Release Date: Nov. 18, 2011
Not 30 seconds into Breaking Dawn – Part 1, teen heartthrob Taylor Lautner tears off his awfully clingy T-shirt in a blind rage, turning into an enormous, computer-generated wolf before bolting into the woods of the Pacific Northwest. His character Jacob has just learned his longtime object of obsession Bella (Kristen Stewart) is marrying her undead love Edward (Robert Pattinson), and Lautner’s all-consuming, PG-13-rated passion demands ACTION! It’s a promising way to kick off the film, hinting at the final, climactic showdown between werewolf and vampire that the three previous Twilight films have been teasing at for years.
Unfortunately, teasing is what Twilight does best. Based on the young adult book series by Stephenie Meyer, the Twilight films specialize in a frothy mix of titillation and denial that Bitch magazine famously dubbed “abstinence porn.” The series caters to tween girls of all ages with overly-simplified notions of the bad boy who just needs the right girl to bring out his sensitive side. Anything potentially frightening or dangerous about the story’s supernatural protagonists has been neutered and given a sparkly coat of gloss. Edward and Jacob are preternaturally fast and strong, but their greatest powers are the ability to resist their urges and just cuddle with the one they love.
In order to milk as much money from these Twi-hards as possible, Summit Entertainment wisely copied Warner Bros. Harry Potter template, splitting the last of the source novels into two separate, extremely padded-out movies. Breaking Dawn – Part 1 spends an uncomfortable amount of time following Bella and Edward through their wedding and honeymoon. The opening sequence that offered the hope of a monster battle royale is immediately followed by 25 minutes or so of Bella and Edward’s wedding. From last-minute jitters to the ceremony itself to awkward speeches at the reception, the events simply occur, without any weight or context, like a very special episode of a very boring television show.
This is followed by another 20 or so minutes of Bella and Edward enjoying their honeymoon. Edward has apparently spent much of his century-plus on earth watching soap operas and taking notes: he whisks Bella away on his private jet to Rio de Janeiro, where they dance with the locals at a street carnival before setting off by yacht to his secluded island mansion retreat, where he will at long last make sweet, tender love to Stephenie Meyer — I mean Bella Swan — all night long.
If the previous films have been thinly-veiled wish fulfillment fantasies, Breaking Dawn – Part 1 presents a fascinating premise: what happens once the repressed lovers are finally wed and free to explore their pent-up desires? Given the underlying morality of the Twilight universe, it’s almost inevitable that Bella’s first foray into the dangerous world of sex immediately leads to the worst consequences possible. Not only is she somehow instantly pregnant with her vampire husband’s baby, but the unholy fetus is also developing at an alarming rate, breaking her apart from the inside. The amniotic sack is mystically impenetrable, and any attempt to save Bella by turning her into a vampire would kill the baby.
And it is here, nearly halfway into the film, that Breaking Dawn – Part 1 becomes little more than a Lifetime movie with monsters. Edward, Jacob and their respective families all debate the morality of respecting Bella’s wish to have the baby even if it means she’ll die. The pressure is upped slightly when the werewolf pack surrounds Edward’s ultra-luxurious secluded forest retreat, trapping Bella and Jacob with Edward’s family and a limited supply of blood to sustain them.
The film does climax with a short fight between werewolves and vampires, but Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) so muddies the action that it’s impossible to tell what’s actually happening or who’s actually winning. It’s mercifully cut short, albeit in the most ludicrous way possible: for all of the monsters and beasts involved in the plot, the scariest part of the entire film is seeing a grown man fall hopelessly in love with a newborn baby, and knowing the creators intended it to be profound and bittersweet instead of laughably perverse.
The biggest problem with the film is the character at its center: Bella Swan is so lifeless and inert that it’s actually a relief when she disappears for long stretches of the movie. It seems cruel to have a character as boring as her be the representative of humanity in the world of the supernatural. As a vessel for readers of the novels to project themselves into, the character doesn’t need any color or personality. They would, however, be a HUGE help for the lead actress of a multimillion-dollar film franchise. The film concludes with a fully-anticipated twist that hopefully gives Kristen Stewart the opportunity to actually DO something in Breaking Dawn – Part 2, though it probably won’t.
After all, teasing is what Twilight does best.
2 Stars (out of 5)
