Here comes the bride, all dressed in white. Here comes the groom, Mister Hunky McDoom. Watch them have sex, in a bed that he wrecks. See her deliver, a brat who’s eaten her liver.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson star in ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 1.’
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1,” the penultimate installment in the series that began in 2008, is a slight improvement on the previous films. This is not saying much. These “Twilight” adaptations are not movies. They are a cult.
In this installment — which begins with a scene where Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) rips off his T-shirt and goes on a werewolf rampage in the woods after receiving a wedding invitation — 18-year-old Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) marry in spite of the dicey facts that the groom is a vampire and about 110 years old. I believe that the audience for this stuff is more interested in what her wedding dress looks like than whether the film is any good.
Edward claims not to have gotten “cold feet,” even though we know his feet must be cold because he’s a vampire. After the wedding, Edward takes Bella on a surprise honeymoon to a Brazilian beach house. Only problem is after several nights of awesome, bed-wrecking sex, Bella starts eating half-raw chicken. Holy “Rosemary’s Baby,” I think she’s in the family way.
Directed by Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters,” “Dreamgirls [trailer]”), “Breaking Dawn” is never remotely scary in spite of all the monsters, if not gods, and comes to life only in scenes in which Edward recalls hunting humans (only serial killers) and remembers seeing “The Bride of Frankenstein” in 1935.
As Bella’s friend Jessica, Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”) is the only cast member who manages to deliver a witty performance, and for that crime against the franchise she is banished from the film. Even the fans in the audience at the preview I attended laughed at the wooden acting and flat line readings, especially by Lautner.
As Stewart walks up the aisle in her Art Deco gown with her policeman father (Billy Burke), she was writhing in either dread or desire, I couldn’t tell which. I was too busy wondering: What sort of minister marries a human to a vampire? An awful lot of PG-13 sex follows. The battles between the vampires trying to protect the pregnant Bella and the werewolves look like CGI pillow fights. Well, only one more film and the sun will finally set on “Twilight.”
