Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

daniel cohen walks down the aisle with Edward and Bella …

Plot: Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are finally wed, but soon afterwards, Bella becomes pregnant, a pregnancy that could potentially kill her. Due to the nature of the vampire/human bond, the baby also threatens the treaty between the Cullens and Jacob’s (Taylor Lautner) wolf tribe, the Quileute.

I might still be at the movie theater watching The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1. This is one of the slowest films I’ve ever seen in my life. This movie could have easily been 80-90 minutes, and you know what, it wouldn’t of been half bad if the pace was quicker.

Everything about this movie is slow: From Bella getting dressed for her wedding, to her walking down the aisle, to even Edward and Bella making their way through a crowded street, it takes as much time as humanly possible, while also being set to bad music. There are really only two set pieces to this film: The Cullen residence, and Edward and Bella’s honeymoon house. The majority of this film is pretty much everyone in the Cullen house pacing around. It’s kind of like sitting around your own house waiting for the phone to ring. That’s what this movie is: people waiting for something big to happen.

The movie is so repetitive, that I felt like I kept time traveling to the same moment over and over again. How many times do we need to see Edward turn away Bella in bed because he’s afraid he’ll hurt her again? How many times do we need to see Jacob get frustrated about everything? How many times do we need to see Bella in agony? Well, according to the director (Bill Condon), we need to see these things a lot.

Now, the acting was surprisingly okay. I’ve only seen the original Twilight, and that was some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen on film, but here, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are actually engaging. There’s definitely chemistry there, and even though they are given horrific dialogue, they actually deliver it as well as you can expect. The love story itself is a small step above a CW show, but its okay. All the other actors who play the Cullens are solid, especially Ashley Greene (Alice) and Peter Facinelli (Carlisle) who do have strong personalities.

The werewolves on the other hand are a different story. Taylor Lautner isn’t awful, but he’s certainly not good. His delivery is okay, but he’s got these facial expressions that are just cringe-worthy. He’s at least tolerable in this film. All the other actors who play wolves though are pretty terrible. Most notably Booboo Stewart as Seth, one of the wolves who sides with Jacob. He takes overacting to a whole new level. Everything involving the wolves was really lame. The performances sucked, and when they all transform into wolves and gather around arguing, it’s silly, and feels out of place. So does this mean I would be on Team Edward?

Speaking of people transforming into wolves, the effects are pretty weak. Whenever vampires use their super speed, it looks worse than the super speed used in the CW’s Smallville — it’s television level production.

The one thing I can say about this film is that the cinematography looks gorgeous at times. I guess the element fans love most about this series is the love story between Edward and Bella, and the look of the film does emphasize that passion pretty well, especially when both characters go night swimming. While the effects are lame, the shots of the film look good.

I get that this isn’t made for me, but there’s a solid 80 minute movie in here somewhere. And even though it takes forever for the film to get where it wants to go, the climax is fairly intense, and definitely held my interest. But once again, after the climax, the film goes back to snail pace mode. There’s something that you know is going to happen to Bella at the end, but the movie takes so long for it to come to fruition, it loses all the momentum it had built up in the last ten minutes. You lose interest. There are plenty of good elements that save this from being a bad movie, but when you break it down, this is the first half of Titanic stretched out to a full length film, and Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are not Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Rating: 5 out of 10 (Barely Passable Entertainment)