AT THE MOVIES
 | by Isy Jordan
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and more...
The final book of the Twilight Saga has been split into two movies to continue what appears to be a new trend in Hollywood. This is the fourth film in the franchise and was released over a year after the third installment. Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or are we bored at this point?
And how would this book translate on the big screen? Different from the first three books, Breaking Dawn follows our heroine Bella on what should be her happily ever after. Right? She prepares for her wedding to vampire love Edward and, after a honeymoon where she remains human, her pending transformation into an immortal herself. We get through the anticipated wedding, the heart rending reception with Bella's parents who are unaware just how much they are going to lose their daughter. And finally, there's Jacob. Bella's werewolf love who has had to resign himself to losing the girl he loves to a creature who is his natural enemy.
Well, as voracious fans of the books and film franchise already know, things don't go according to plan. Things go wrong in a very big, gory, graphic and apparently seizure inducing way.
Thoughts? This is a hard one. I'll admit that I'm a fan of the books and of the movies so far. But this movie wasn't the end all beat all theatrical experience I was hoping for. Was it because there was too long a wait between films? Maybe. Is it the knowledge that the final film is another year away? Possibly.
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But if I were to be completely honest, this movie fell flat for me because the actors seemed to also feel my waning interest in this series. They play their parts well enough, particularly the three leads. But that passion that permeated the first film didn't survive to this point in the franchise. I wanted to feel Jacob's pain in losing Bella, his despair over her unnatural pregnancy that could only end with her death. But I didn't. I wanted to sigh and feel that intense happy buzz from the wedding and honeymoon of Bella and Edward that would last at least until I had to start back to work the next morning. It wasn't there. I hope other people got more of an emotional buzz from the film. Maybe it was just me.
Also, Edward didn't sparkle in this film -- even when shirtless in a sunny, tropical paradise. Did anyone else notice that?
This film is 117 minutes, which despite everything goes by pretty quickly, and is rated PG-13. That's a bit of stretch but they pulled off the rating. One thing, as a fan, that always stuck out for me was the birth scene which ends the first movie. In the books, it was like reading The Chronicles of Narnia only to have Stephen King insert a chapter with his particular brand of macabre infused in it. That's the only way I can describe it. To the delight of fans, they stayed pretty true to that entire back breaking, bloody mess of a scene. But there are many young fans of the franchise and for some of them, the scene was a bit much. It's a lot more disturbing to see it played out on the big screen. It even, apparently, caused two separate incidents involving seizures. Probably from the strobing light effect used in that scene. It could also have been from the in-your-face gore and shock. So I can't recommend this for younger teens.
If you haven't seen the film yet and you're not a huge fan of either the books or the films, wait for it to come to DVD. If you are a fan, I hope you liked it better than I did. All we can hope for is that Part 2 is either a lot more fun -- Bella will be a vampire then -- or that someone in the movie will make us give a damn again.
Isy
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