Breaking Dawn movie review

I saw Breaking Dawn (part 1) with a couple of girl friends. "Ladies," I said before the movie, "We need to get drunk."  I was expecting a big crowd but our opening-night theatre wasn't even full.  We sat next to a woman with a gaggle of tweens.  She was amused by neither her daughter and her friends, nor me and my half-drunk friends.  Poor woman.  

After previews for the new Mission Impossible movie, followed by that Snow White movie (the Charlize Theron, not the crappy-looking Julia Roberts one), and the Hunger Games we were pretty excited.  I'm not kidding you, that Hunger Games trailer is THRILLING.   Then, Breaking Dawn started, and, I have to hand it them, presumably without irony Jacob tears off his shirt in the first ten seconds.  We all laughed.  We laughed through most of the movie which is, yes, completely ridiculous.  If you ask me, there are two reasons to watch this movie (spoilers coming): 1. Bella and Edward finally have sex (after getting married, natch) and 2. Bella gives birth to a vampire baby.  I think they could have gone a LOT further with both, but, it was fun to watch on the big screen. 

Me and my pals spent a lot of time talking about what an effed up person Stephanie Meyers is - in this book, her character fulfills this bizarre lady-child fantasy - to marry a guy who looks like he's 18 but is emotionally mature (sort of); to look 18 yourself for ETERNITY; to have a baby but pregnancy only lasts 1 month; instead of gaining weight, you loose it to the point of dangerous emaciation; and, after you have the baby (another spoiler) you don't even have to raise it because it rapidly grows to (you guessed it) an emotionally mature 18 years old in the space of a couple months.

Dan Kois wrote a hilarious review of Breaking Dawn in the Village Voice.  Although, even though he just eviserates the movie, he also acknowledges that he actually TEARED UP during the wedding scene when one of the corniest exchanges of the entire movie takes place.  Bella says, "Don't let me fall." and her dad says, "Never."  Really?

Other ridiculous lines from the movie include, but are not limited to:

You'll kill her!

"You'll kill her!" shouted by Jacob re: honeymoon sex between vampire and human, wherein Edward might presumably loose control in mutual virginity-loosing with his soul mate and kill her for some reason.  Instead he just completely destroys their marital bed and gives her a few bruises. 


"It's destroying you from the inside!" Warns Edward to Bella re: rapidly growing fetus.

"If you kill her, you kill me!" Jacob again, after being "imprinted" on their baby.  My friends, who haven't actually read any of the books but are just good sports, each turned to me in the theatre: "What's imprinting!!?!?!"  But, it's too idiotic to explain.

See: Angel, season 1

Maybe this comes from watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer for all those years, but to me, the silliest thing about this franchise is how the vampires, particularly Edward, dress.  There's a line in one of the books that goes something like, "There's nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis." (Again, I point to the bizarreness of Stephanie Meyers) and for some strange reason, each movie has been going with this whole Vampire-As-Lands-End-Model thing.  In a honeymoon scene, he's even wearing Sperry Topsiders, for chrissake!  Look, I mean, vampires wear leather and distressed designer denim.  Everyone knows that. 

Sperrys

 

But, back to that teary-eyed reviewer from the Village Voice... despite this clumsily told story, Meyers did manage to stumble upon some universal truths that many of us find appealing/touching, despite ourselves.  After the movie, my friend said sometimes pregnancy does feel like that - that you're being overwhelmed by an alien being inside you.  Would I like to be 18 forever, beautiful and thin, with perfect skin and hair, for eternity, with nothing to do but watch my stock portfolio increase over the centuries and hang out with my husband in his Sperry Topsiders?  Sure I would.